Measures

Participants were asked to choose one group activity that they were involved in before the onset of social distancing and to describe the nature of it through purpose-written questions about the frequency of meetings, duration of membership, the number of people in the group, and the expertise level of the group. Participants were asked to complete measures of group identification and psychological need satisfaction by retrospectively reflecting on their music group in F2F mode. Next, we asked respondents whether their music group had adapted to social distancing by meeting electronically. Those whose groups did not adapt were asked to describe (in an open text box) why they believed this to be the case. For those whose groups did adapt (n = 153), participants were asked questions about the nature and success of the adaptation and to complete group identification and psychological need satisfaction measures a second time in relation to this virtually adapted music group.

The Group Identification Scale developed by Doosje et al. (1995) includes four items (e.g., “I identify with others in this group” and “I see myself as a member of this group”). Responses were recorded on a 5-point response scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Scores were calculated by averaging the four items, with higher scores indicating stronger identification with a group. This measure is psychometrically acceptable (Postmes et al., 2013) and had good reliability in this sample (F2F: α = 0.874; virtual: α = 0.870).

The 7-item psychological need satisfaction scale used by Kyprianides and Easterbrook (2020) was adapted to include three more items derived from social identity theory relating to support given and received by ingroup members: group-based emotional regulation 1 (“I share my feelings with others in the group”), group-based emotional regulation 2 (“I provide emotional support to others in the group”), and the opportunity to help others (“I make a contribution to the group”; Haslam et al., 2005). The original seven items explored the needs of social support (“I receive support from others in the group”), self-esteem (“being a part of the group gives me self-esteem”), competence (“being part of the group gives me a sense of achievement”), relatedness (“I am close and connected to other people in the group”), autonomy (“I can speak my mind in the group”), control (“I have control over my activities in the group”), and meaning (“being a part of the group gives my life meaning”). A 5-point response scale was used, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A global psychological need satisfaction score was calculated by averaging the 10 items, with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction of psychological needs. In this sample, the measure had good to excellent reliability (F2F: α = 0.896; virtual: α = 0.929).

The mental health score from the 12-item short form health survey (SF-12) (Ware et al., 1996) was used (e.g., “how much of the time during the past 4 weeks have you felt calm and peaceful?”). Scoring was performed using the method described in Ware et al. (1995). Some questions were reworded to be more appropriate to social distancing restrictions (e.g., a question asking about an individual’s ability to visit relatives was changed to talking to relatives instead). Lower scores indicate lower mental health functioning, where scores are compared with the norms developed for the scale (M = 50, SD = 10).