74 chapter 3 affects you’. Example items are: ‘I can stay determined’ (persistence); ‘I think I can find multiple means to deal with this’ (adaptability); ‘I can grow as a person by dealing with this (transformability)’.19 Individual Adaptation Behaviours. Participants indicated to what extent they currently engaged in twelve individual behaviours to reduce the risks of COVID-19, on a scale from 1 = not at all to 7 = very much. We included a general item (i.e., ‘I try to protect myself from the coronavirus’), and eleven specific behaviours either recommended by the World Health Organisation (e.g., ‘I wash my hands regularly’) or found in outlets about the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., ‘I avoid people from other countries/areas with corona infections’). Collective Adaptation Behaviours. Participants indicated to what extent they were currently engaging in five collective behaviours to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as protecting others from the virus, supporting others affected by it, or educating others to take measures to adapt (‘e.g., I try to protect others from the coronavirus’). The scale ranged from 1 = not at all to 7 = very much. Cognitive Coping. Participants reported their use of cognitive coping strategies, namely cognitive strategies to manage negative emotions (Lazarus, 1990). Two items reflecting opposite approaches were used, namely indicating positive reappraisal and behavioural disengagement (Lazarus, 1990; Carver et al., 1989): ‘I try to make the best out of the situation’ and ‘I do nothing, because there is no point’ (reverse scored). As the two items did not form a reliable scale (rsb < .60), we only used the first item as a measure of cognitive coping, and report results on the second item for completeness. Positive Personal Change due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. We asked participants to what extent they experienced five positive personal changes as a result of facing COVID-19 in Italy (e.g., ‘It helped me become a better person’), on a scale from 1 = not at all to 7 = very much. Items were adapted from measures of post-traumatic growth (PTG) and benefit finding (McMillen & Fisher, 1998; Tomich & Helgeson, 2004).20 Well-being. General well-being was measured with the single item ‘I am satisfied with my life’ (from the Satisfaction with Life Scale; Diener et al., 1985). 19 We also examined whether a shorter version of the transilience scale (i.e., 6-items) performs equally well as the full scale, as such version can be of more practical use when there are space or time constraints. These results can be found in Appendix A and in the Supplementary Materials. 20 We also included the item ‘It made me more aware of human vulnerability’, which was not included in this scale as it does not indicate a positive change.
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