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Abstract
COVID-19 brought many changes in the daily functioning of many individuals, including emerging adults, due to social distancing, stay-at-home orders, and the closure of public institutions, thus representing a threat to physical and mental health. We investigated how emerging adults felt regarding their experience during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were also interested in what they had been thinking about in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic one year after its declaration. To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative study. The participants included 51 students aged 19 to 28 years old. Conducting thematic analysis six themes related to the students’ feelings towards COVID-19 emerged: collection of fears, signs of depressed state, social discomfort, loneliness and nostalgia, mood swings and adaptation, and resistance through emotions. Four additional themes emerged related to students’ thoughts on COVID-19: reviewing all information related to the virus, how to protect yourself, orientation to a positive future, and reflection on human strength. These findings give an important insight into the challenges experienced by emerging adults from their perspective, which is valuable for further informing public policy and communities, to create preventive programs that could be applied in similar critical situations.
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, emerging adulthood, experience, feelings and thoughts during the pandemic, qualitative research, thematic analysis
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia under project Identity Crisis in Women Facing Infertility: Mixed Methods Approach—InsideMe (Grant number 1568).
Publication Date
2-9-2025
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7151
Recommended APA Citation
Šnele, M. S., Janković, I., & Todorović, J. (2025). Experiencing the first year of COVID-19 pandemic: Feelings and thoughts of emerging adults. The Qualitative Report, 30(1), 3043-3061. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7151
ORCID ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5492-3386
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