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Objective: To establish the prevalence of mood and wellness behaviors in college students across a school year. Methods: 1,554 college students (69.4% female; average age 18.8 years) were followed with daily surveys on wellness behaviors for the school year. 1,207 participants completed at least 50% of daily surveys on mood, exercise, sleep, nutrition, mindfulness practice and singing/playing musical instrument. Results: Over 88.7% of college students reported at least one wellness behavior each day with 17.7% reporting 4 or more. Each of the wellness behaviors, however, displayed distinct prevalence patterns, varied significantly across the school year, and often across a given school week. Almost every individual wellness behavior was associated with a positive mood, and the cumulative number of daily wellness behaviors was a strongly associated with mood state. Conclusions: Daily wellness behaviors are collectively common, vary significantly within individuals, and are strongly associated with positive mood, both individual and cumulatively.

Personality traits have been found to be related to a variety of health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine how personality traits were associated with adjustment to the COVID pandemic in college students. The sample included 484 first-year university students (76% female) attending a northeastern university who completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality assessment at the beginning of a semester that was disrupted by the COVID pandemic. Using a phone-based app, students completed daily ratings of mood, perceived stress levels, and engagement in a number of health promotion activities (exercise, mindfulness, adequate sleep, etc.) throughout the semester both before and after the onset of the pandemic (e.g., a within-person longitudinal design). Results, as expected, showed that mood and wellness indices generally declined during the COVID period, although stress levels actually decreased. Further, irrespective of COVID, improved mood, less perceived stress and greater participation in health promotion activities were significantly associated with a number of personality traits including neuroticism (lower), extraversion (higher), agreeableness (higher), and conscientiousness (higher). Of primary interest, mixed-effects models were used to test how major personality traits interacted with any changes in daily ratings from the pre-COVID to COVID period. Significant interactions terms were found suggesting differential impacts of the COVID epidemic for students with low versus high levels of particular traits. Higher levels of extraversion, for example, were found to be related to decreases in mood as the pandemic progressed in contrast to those with lower extraversion, for whom there was a slight increase in mood over time. These data support the conclusion that personality traits are related to mental health and can play a role in a person's ability to cope with major stressful events. Different traits may also be more adaptive to different types of stressors., Competing Interests: Dr. Rettew receives royalties from Oxford University Press and Psychology Today and is a consultant to Happy Health, Inc. Dr. Hudziak is a consultant to Happy Health Inc.. The other authors report that no competing interests exist. These interests do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products associated with this research to declare.

The University of Vermont Wellness Environment program is a neuroscience-inspired, incentive-based behavioral change program designed to improve health and academic outcomes in college-age students. The program uses health promotion and illness prevention delivered in classrooms, residential halls, and via a customized App that incentivizes healthy behaviors and monitors the use of health-promoting activities. This article presents feasibility data on participation of college students in ongoing data collection about key outcomes related to health and well-being. The data collection component were easily implemented in college students and yielded high-quality data., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)