Research

RESEARCH STUDIES

Coping with the COVID-19 Outbreak Study

From mid-March to early August 2020, we asked adults in Canada and the U.S. to give us a glimpse into their day-to-day lives during the outbreak. In total, over 1000 adults filled out “daily diaries” twice per day for a week to share their experiences. We are publishing the findings in research journals (see Publications page), and we are sharing our findings with popular media and through virtual presentations with community groups.

Our collaborator Dr. Anita DeLongis is continuing to collect survey data to track long-term adjustment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. To learn more, please visit https://blogs.ubc.ca/coronavirus

Contact: covid@psych.ubc.ca
Principal Investigators: Dr. Nancy Sin and Dr. Anita DeLongis

 

Daily Experiences and Health Study

Ever wonder how the ups and downs of daily life affect your health? The UPLIFT Health Lab at UBC is inviting adults ages 25 and older to participate in a study about their daily experiences and health. Participants will be asked to complete mobile surveys as they go about their day-to-day activities, in addition to collecting health assessments. For more information, please visit https://blogs.ubc.ca/dailyhealth/

Principal Investigator: Dr. Nancy Sin (Co-Investigator: Dr. Anita DeLongis)
Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

 

Well-Being in the Daily Lives of Adults Study

The purpose of this study is to examine how everyday events — such as stress and positive experiences — shape emotional well-being among adults of different age groups.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Nancy Sin
Funded by: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); UBC Hampton New Investigator Award

For more information, contact wellbeing@psych.ubc.ca

 

Stress, Activity, and Sleep Study (SASS)

Our past research has shown that good sleep promotes next-day well-being, including more positive events, fewer stressful events, and greater emotional well-being. This study aimed to understand the hypothesized bidirectional associations of day-to-day stress processes with sleep and physical activity. Participants reported their experiences and emotions several times per day via smartphone surveys. Sleep and physical activity were assessed using wrist actigraphy and thigh-worn accelerometers, respectively.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Nancy Sin
Funded by: UBC Bridge Funding Program

For more information, contact sass@psych.ubc.ca

 


OVERARCHING RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Biological and behavioural mechanisms linking daily experiences to long-term health and aging
  • Positive emotions & positive events in stress and coping processes
  • Day-to-day dynamics of psychosocial well-being and health behaviours
  • Biopsychosocial determinants of risk and outcomes for cardiovascular disease

EXAMPLES OF OUR RECENT FINDINGS 

  • People who experience more daily positive events tend to have lower inflammation and steeper diurnal cortisol slopes (Sin, Graham-Engeland, & Almeida, 2015; Sin, Ong, Stawski, & Almeida, 2018)
  • Loss of positive emotions (and in women, increases in negative emotions) when faced with daily stressors is associated with elevated inflammation (Sin, Graham-Engeland, Ong, & Almeida, 2016)
  • How people respond to daily stressors — including affective reactivity to stressors, perceived stressor severity, and daily negative emotions — is related to lower heart rate variability, whereas stressor exposure (i.e., frequency of daily stressors) was not (Sin, Sloan, McKinley, & Almeida, 2016)
  • In two samples of middle-aged employees in the IT and nursing care industries, better sleep quality (and, to a lesser degree, longer sleep duration) predicted emotional well-being and lower odds of encountering stressors on the following day. Daily positive experiences were associated with improved as well as disrupted subsequent sleep (Sin, Almeida, Crain, Kossek, Berkman, & Buxton, 2017).
  • Among patients with cardiovascular disease, positive emotions are associated with a range of healthier lifestyle behaviours, including physical activity, sleep, medication adherence, and non-smoking (Sin, Moskowitz, & Whooley, 2015)
  • Depressive symptoms predict worsening of health behaviours and declines in functional status across 5 years in patients with cardiovascular disease (Sin, Kumar, Gehi, & Whooley, 2017; Sin, Yaffe, & Whooley, 2015)