Since December 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic is travelling around the world. In the first waves, governments are struggling how to deal with the pandemic. Each government has their own view on the...Show moreSince December 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic is travelling around the world. In the first waves, governments are struggling how to deal with the pandemic. Each government has their own view on the coronavirus and how to battle against it. In whatever way governments fight Covid-19, they have to take into account a number of aspects. One of these aspects is the level of democratic values in a country. In the first part of this thesis, I researched whether or not democratic values, as measured by the V-dem have been shaping the stringency of policy, as measured by the Oxford Stringency Index, in the first periods of the Covid-19 pandemic. It turned out that the democratic values had no statistically significant effect on the peak of stringency in policy. Out of the variables that I controlled for, only the number of Covid-19 deaths had this significant effect. In the second part of this thesis, a small case study was conducted to outlying cases. This case study showed that fear, prevention, a lack of knowledge and the economy interests has driven the initial responses in the Covid-19 pandemic.Show less
Objective: Research on loneliness suggests that loneliness increases physical and mental health concerns. This study aimed to investigate the predictor role of psychological distress, childhood...Show moreObjective: Research on loneliness suggests that loneliness increases physical and mental health concerns. This study aimed to investigate the predictor role of psychological distress, childhood trauma, mistrust, and the living situation on loneliness during the Covid-19 pandemic to identify vulnerable groups. Methods: 349 participants took part in this cross-sectional study. They completed online selfquestionnaires assessing their level of loneliness, psychological distress, childhood trauma, mistrust, and living situation. The study was conducted online during September 2020 and April 2021 at the Universities of Leiden (the Netherlands) and Mannheim (Germany). Most of the respondents were 18-25 years old university students from 30 different nationalities. Results: The results indicated that childhood trauma (B =.074, SE =.012 t = 6.29, p < .05) and psychological distress (B = .007, SE = .003, t = 2.11, p < .05) predict loneliness while mistrust (B = -.074, SE =.044, t = -1.68, p = .092) does not. The effect of psychological distress became insignificant, when controlling for the other predictor variables (β = .003, SE =.003 t = 1.11, p =.26). No significant effect was found on loneliness score between two categories of living situation (F(1,347) =.64, p =.424, ηp 2 =.002). There was no significant interaction between childhood trauma and psychological distress. Conclusions: The current study highlights that experiencing childhood trauma is a risk factor for the feeling of loneliness during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prospective research is needed to fully understand the reasons and consequences of loneliness and its relationship with possible risk factors.Show less
