Introduction
cognitive and behavioural strategies
REGRESSION
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted adolescent mental health on a global scaleHowever, a considerable subgroup of students did relatively well despite the pandemicMindset theoryRecently, there has been a growing interest in the association between mindset and mental health. In their meta-analysis, Burnette et al.Based on the discussed literature, students with a growth mindset may employ more adaptive coping styles (e.g., active coping) and less maladaptive coping styles (e.g., behavioural disengagement) to deal with COVID-19-related challenges, and therefore are more resilient in the school context. Coping is defined as cognitive and behavioural strategies that individuals apply to manage demands evaluated as taxingThe current literature has several limitations that need to be addressed. First, most COVID-19-related research, for understandable reasons, lack a pre-pandemic assessment of (school-related) mental health, limiting the potential to isolate COVID-specific effects (for notable exceptions, seeBy coincidence, our research group was conducting an RCT study into a growth mindset intervention for high-school students and just finished the one-year follow-up measurement, when the pandemic hit (see Fig. Timeline of the study in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Note. This timeline shows the timing of the study (grey) in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic (orange; dark orange depicts full school closures, while light orange depicts partial school closures). Schools first closed down on March 16th 2020. T0 (baseline), RCT (randomized controlled trial; adolescents either received a growth mindset intervention or control intervention), T1 (direct-post), T2 (1-year follow-up; pre-pandemic) and T3 (2-year follow-up; peri-pandemic). Dark grey depicts the mean date questionnaires were received, light grey depicts the entire time period in which questionnaires were received. Resilience, coping and mindset were measured at T3. Resilience was defined as residuals of the regression between school burnout symptoms and COVID-related stress exposure, controlled for burnout at T2 (normative modelling method). Coping was measured based on ‘the last year, since the pandemic started’.Based on previous research showing that differences between fixed and growth mindset are amplified by set-backs