Acoba 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.

1330720

and various indicators of mental health, including positive affect, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)
anxiety, and depression. The primary objective was to investigate The PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) is composed of two 10-
the potential mechanisms that explain how social support positively item mood scales that assess both positive and negative affect.
influences mental health outcomes. For this study, only the positive affect subscale was utilized,
as the negative affect was already measured by the DASS-21.
Participants were asked to rate the degree to which they have
Participants experienced each emotion during a specified period, using a 5-point
scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). The internal
Participants were 426 Filipino adults presently residing in consistency reliability of the PANAS scales ranges from.86 to.90 for
the Philippines. The participants had a mean age of 28.40 years positive affect and from.84 to.87 for negative affect, indicating good
old (age range: 18 - 64 years old, SD = 10.19). Majority of reliability. The Cronbach alpha for the positive affect subscale was
them were females (74.2%), single (80.3%) and were living with 0.89 in this study. Díaz-García et al. (2020) additionally affirmed the
their families (88.5%). Most of them were college graduate suitability of the PANAS when administered online and endorsed
(48.4%) followed by high school graduates (26.3%) and college its applicability in clinical settings.
students (11.7%). The participants were recruited online, via
referral from acquaintances, or through the participants’ referrals Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21)
themselves. Informed consent was first obtained before answering The DASS-21 (Lovibond and Lovibond, 1995) are a self-
the research questionnaires. report assessment tool designed to measure levels of anxiety and
depression, as well as stress. The items on the DASS-21 are rated
on a 4-point scale, with 0 indicating that an item did not apply
Measures to the respondent at all and 3 indicating that an item applied
to the respondent very much or most of the time. The internal
Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social consistency of the DASS-21 scales has been found to be good to
Support (MSPSS) excellent in previous research studies, as measured by Cronbach’s
The MSPSS (Zimet et al., 1988) is a tool designed to assess alpha (Lovibond and Lovibond, 1995). The validity of the DASS-
perceived social support from friends, family, and significant 21 has also been demonstrated consistently. In this study, the stress
others. It comprises 12 items, with 4 items dedicated to subscale of the DASS-21 was not included since perceived stress was
each subscale. The scale has demonstrated robust psychometric the predictor variable under consideration. The Cronbach alpha for
properties, including excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s this study was 0.96. The DASS21 also exhibited strict longitudinal
alpha = 0.95) and strong test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation invariance, and the subscales also displayed adequate reliability
coefficient [ICC] = 0.91), with kappa values ranging from 0.62 to in the two time points. The results are the first demonstration
0.71. Concurrent validity is evidenced by a negative correlation of longitudinal invariance with a Filipino sample and provide
with perceived stress and a significant positive correlation with evidence that DASS-21 can be useful in both screening and
rewarding feelings (Wang et al., 2021). In the present study, in monitoring severity of different categories of symptoms over
Cronbach’s alpha for the overall scale is 0.88, and for the time, particularly among school-based Filipino youth (Simon and
subscales, it is 0.91 for significant others, 0.87 for family, and
Bernardo, 2022).
0.85 for friends. Participants provide responses on a Likert
scale ranging from 1 (absolutely disagree) to 7 (absolutely
agree), with a higher score indicating greater perceived social
support.
Procedure

Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10) This study utilized a cross-sectional online survey to collect
The PSS-10 (Cohen et al., 1983) was used to assess participants data between July 21, 2021 and August 5, 2021. The Ethics
perceived COVID-19 stress levels. The PSS-10 comprises ten Committee for Psychological Research was contacted to obtain
items that are rated on a Likert scale ranging from 0 (never) permission for conducting the survey. Before completing the
to 4 (very often). The composite score can range from 0 measures, informed consent was obtained from each participant,
to 40, with higher scores indicating greater perceived stress. and they completed the measures using Google Forms, which
The PSS-10 has demonstrated good reliability and validity, ensured anonymity and confidentiality. The survey comprised
with reported Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.78 to 0.91 different measures, including a sociodemographic questionnaire,
and test-retest reliability coefficients ranging from 0.55 to 0.85 the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS),
(Cohen et al., 1983; Mitchell et al., 2008). For the present the Perceived Covid-19 Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10), the Positive affect
study, a modified version of the PSS-10 was utilized, adapted subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and
from the study of Zhang et al. (2021), to reflect perceived the Depression and Anxiety subscales of DASS-21.
stress levels specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The original PSS items were modified to start with the
phrase “Since the COVID-19 has occurred,” with an example Ethical considerations
item being “Since the COVID-19 has occurred, how often
have you been upset because of something that happened The procedures undertaken in this study involving human
unexpectedly?” participants followed the ethical standards set forth by the

Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org