Voice to youths: the development of the YAPEQS (young adult’s pandemic experience quality)

Despite recent researches have classified youngsters as a high vulnerability target and open to risk factors for depressive and anxiety symptoms during the pandemic (Wang et al., 2020; Mazza et al., 2020), in the pandemic young subjects have had a smaller space to express themselves, listening and support related to their needs and specific difficulties caused by the restrictions. The present research aims at investigating the peculiarities of pandemic's feelings in young adults through the construction of a measure about the quality of the pandemic experience in young adults (YAPEQS). A previous explorative moment has allowed to define the construct and the dimensions to investigate. This is a multifactor construct composed by four different dimensions: feelings, impact, preoccupations and emotions expressed during the three pandemic phases (Lockdown; summer 2020; second wave 2020-2021). Basing on the answers, a closed questions survey has been built (5 points Likert scales) composed from 4 sub-scales: the feelings scale (22 items), the preoccupations scale (18 items), the emotions scale (29 items), the impact scale (12 items). After the pre-testing phase, 205 Italian participants from 18 to 35 years old have answered the survey (M = 23.95; SD = 3.66). The Cronbach's alpha has been calculated to evaluate survey's reliability. The revealed alpha's value (α = .92) suggests good internal consistency; the different sub-scales present the following alpha's values: α = .68 (feelings); α = .84 (preoccupations); α = .82 (emotions); α = .68 (impact). Further studies are needed to validate the survey using the confirmative factorial analysis method. At the end of the validation process, the measure will be also used to assess young adults' feelings after the pandemic's end. The goal is to guide the construction of clinical settings young adults' suffering and specific needs related to the historical contingent period