We investigated the prevalence of anxiety and its associated risk factors among college students who self-isolated for 30 days during the emergence of the Omicron variant in China. We sampled college students specializing in four academic majors by cluster sampling and conducted questionnaires separately on days 1, 10, 20, and 30 after self-isolation. Anxiety was assessed using the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS). An odds ratio (OR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to estimate the strength of associations. A total of 10231 college students responded to the questionnaire 4 times. More students reported experiencing anxiety as the period of self-isolation approached 30 days. Among the students from four different major disciplines, medical students reported the highest rate of anxiety after 30 days of self-isolation, whereas humanities students exhibited the lowest rate of anxiety. Factor analysis indicated that the main reason for anxiety among all participating students was a delay in course completion. For engineering and medical students, there was an association between anxiety and research project delay. This study reveals the level of anxiety associated with COVID-19 pandemic-related self-isolation in college students and finds that it was aggravated by long-term isolation.
Keywords: anxiety; college students; omicron variant; self-isolated.