A Cross-Sectional Survey of National Chinese College Students' Mental Status during COVID-19 Pandemic: Using a Compiled Stress Response Questionnaire

Ying Guo; Hongyu Zhang; Yufei Xie; Xin Tian; Na Luo; Yan Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph191912079

A Cross-Sectional Survey of National Chinese College Students' Mental Status during COVID-19 Pandemic: Using a Compiled Stress Response Questionnaire

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Sep 24;19(19):12079. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912079.

Authors

Ying Guo¹, Hongyu Zhang², Yufei Xie³, Xin Tian¹, Na Luo⁴, Yan Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610066, China.
² The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, 1151 S. Forest Ave., Tempe, AZ 85281, USA.
³ Department of Orthodontics, Shanghai Xuhui District Dental Disease Prevention and Control Institute, Shanghai 200001, China.
⁴ School of Educational Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Luoyu Road No. 1037, Hongshan, Wuhan 430074, China.

Abstract

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread, local governments in China adopted severe lockdown measures to control the pandemic. People were restricted from traveling for leisure, business, education, and medical treatment. Changes were observed in people's psychological states as a result of COVID-19. This study aimed to construct a Stress Response Questionnaire based on the stress response theory for use with college students, to access their authentic mental health conditions and provide psychological intervention suggestions and countermeasures for the emergency plan formulated by the education department. The questionnaire was used to collect responses from a sample of 16,353 college students from 34 provinces in China. The results showed that anxiety levels varied by sex, current location, and pandemic region, each of which predicted different levels of emotional disturbance. Thus, we highly recommend that the Chinese college administration implement appropriate intervention programs and procedures to help college students maintain their mental health.

Keywords: COVID-19; college students; mental health; pandemic situation; psychological stress.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anxiety / epidemiology
Anxiety / psychology
COVID-19* / epidemiology
China / epidemiology
Communicable Disease Control
Cross-Sectional Studies
Humans
Pandemics*
SARS-CoV-2
Students / psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Medical Research Fund of Shanghai Xuhui District Science and Technology Commission and Health Commission, grant number [SHXH202037], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities: HUST, grant number [2022WKYXZD014].