Nice project! Really cool idea. I do find myself wondering how you arrived at your particular hypothesis (not that it’s problematic…. I’m just curious about the process). For example, it is possible that it’s actually a mediation model and not a moderation model? I’d be curious to know more about how you arrived at a moderator v. mediator model. This question largely stems from possible clinical implications given that distress reduction is a mechanism of change in trauma and anxiety-related psychotherapy (eg prolonged exposure therapy).

This is a really interesting study! I like how you mention different levels of covid related worry that could occur based off of location. It would be interesting to investigate this in some of the areas that were more hot spots for covid and for the areas less impacted by the virus. Overall this was really interesting guys! Good job.

Great presentation… I really enjoyed it! Very clear and concise. Given that there are correlations between Covid worry and distress tolerance as well as between distress tolerance and your outcomes, did you consider running an analysis with distress tolerance as a mediator instead of a moderator?

Thank you for watching and for your comments. To answer your question on mediation vs moderation, we decided to look at distress tolerance as moderator instead of a mediator because we believed it would be a protective factor against the negative psychological effects such as COVID-19 related worry, anxiety, and depression. We believed that if an individual had high distress tolerance, they would be able to cope with COVID-19 related worry, anxiety, and depression better than an individual with low distress tolerance. We were thinking that COVID-19 related worry is the predictor and mental health and substance use was the outcome, so we did not see distress tolerance as a mediator. I believe future research could explore mediation by looking at whether distress tolerance causes depression, anxiety, and substance use through COVID-19 related worry. I

Interesting study. Good job!

Great job on this presentation! I like how clear your data was. With the majority of participates being female do you think this affected the study in a big way?

This is a very important set of questions. Could distress tolerance be taught, if it turned out to be an important variable? I’d also be concerned about statistical power in determining the lack of interaction. They’re notoriously hard to find in smaller samples.

Good work!

I found it interesting that the listed mental well-being factors that increased (anxiety & depression, loneliness & isolation, helplessness, and worrying about infecting others) are things that I have seen first-hand in myself and others. It is slightly comforting to know that most people are struggling with the pandemic in the same ways.

I thought this was an interesting study! What I found most interesting was how most COVID anxiety wasn’t very correlated with tobacco or alcohol use but it was very correlated with crack and heroine. I found this interesting because tobacco and alcohol are more common than heroine and other hard drugs so I would think that they would be being used more during stressful times. Also since people are already dying from the virus, I wouldn’t think people would be out doing hard dangerous drugs. I kinda expected the opposite so this was interesting!

This was a great research topic and so relatable.

I thought that this presentation was great! I really liked the topic of the survey, because I feel that COVID had impacted us in all kinds of ways, and this survey shows exactly that. I particularly liked to see the correlations between each area of impact from COVID, and how participants that showed high anxiety also had a high level of depression, but seeing the correlations, in general, were really cool. When I saw the limitations, it made me think about the East Coast variation, because every area of the world is impacted differently, so it is good to wonder about how people from other areas would react differently. This was a great study!

Great job! I enjoyed watching this presentation. COVID has definitely impacted us all in many different ways. I found it interesting how you used your social media accounts to calculate your data. I also found it interesting how much COVID is really affecting people by giving us high levels of anxiety, making people feel helpless, worrying about infecting others, and many people are poorly coping and worrying causing anxiety and depression.

This is really interesting! I wonder if any of the participants have an anxiety disorder or depression, and if that would make your result numbers higher.