2.2. Participants
The inclusion criteria were living in Italy and at least 18 years old. Participants were excluded if survey completion time was below 11 minutes and 11 seconds or above three days. All participants were informed about the study’s aims, their rights, and privacy policies. All of them provided informed consent before completing the survey of the study, conducted according to Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct of the Italian Association of Psychology.
Adult participants (n = 1038) were recruited by the survey company Qualtrics from an online research panel using stratified quota sampling to guarantee that the sample characteristics of gender, age, household income, and region (Campania, Lazio, Lombardia, and Veneto) matched the Italian population. After the completion of the survey online (median time of completion = 41 min), each participant was reimbursed by Qualtrics.
The mean age of the total sample was 49.94 years (median = 51, SD = 16.14, range = 18–87), and 51.15% were female (n = 531). Participants were recruited from the four selected regions based on their population size: Campania (n = 227), Lazio (n = 234), Lombardia (n = 391), Veneto (n = 186). Most of the participants were Italian (96.61%, n = 1003) and with Caucasian ethnicity (74.66%, n = 775). A minority had only elementary or some secondary education (8.28%, n = 86), nearly half had completed high school (48.74%, n = 506) with a further 42.97% having attained a higher level of education. Less than half were in full employment (44.41%, n = 461), with 24.18% retired (n = 251). Married participants comprised 57.99% (n = 602) whereas never married participants comprised 26.59% of the sample (n = 276).
Only 14 participants tested positive for COVID-19 (1.35%). Two and a half percent of the sample confirmed the presence of coronavirus cases among individuals living in the same house, and 17.82% among friends or relatives. Finally, 10.50% of the participants mourning a loss due to confirmed cases of COVID-19. Further information about demographics is available in the Supplementary Materials (S1, Tables S1–S20 and https://osf.io/nx2zd/).