A systematic review of studies on stress during the COVID-19 pandemic by visualizing their structure through COOC, VOS viewer, and Cite Space software

Liyun Lu; Guiping Liu; Yanhua Xu; Jinxiu Jiang; Zizi Wei

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1297112

A systematic review of studies on stress during the COVID-19 pandemic by visualizing their structure through COOC, VOS viewer, and Cite Space software

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Jan 25:15:1297112. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1297112. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Liyun Lu¹, Guiping Liu¹, Yanhua Xu², Jinxiu Jiang³, Zizi Wei²

Affiliations

¹ College of Teacher Education, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
² School of Geography and Environment, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China.
³ College of Teacher Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 epidemic generated different forms of stress. From this period, there has been a remarkable increase in the quantity of studies on stress conducted by scholars. However, few used bibliometric analyses to focus on overall trends in the field.

Purpose: This study sought to understand the current status and trends in stress development during COVID-19, as well as the main research drives and themes in this field.

Methods: 2719 publications from the Web of Science(WOS) core repository on stress during COVID-19 were analyzed by utilizing Co-Occurrence (COOC), VOS viewer, and Cite Space bibliometric software. The overall features of research on stress during COVID-19 were concluded by analyzing the quantity of publications, keywords, countries, and institutions.

Results: The results indicated that the United States had the largest number of publications and collaborated closely with other countries with each other. University of Toronto was the most prolific institution worldwide. Visualization and analysis demonstrated that the influence of stress during COVID-19 on the work, life, mental and spiritual dimensions is a hot research topic. Among other things, the frequency of each keyword in research on stress during COVID-19 increased from 2021 to 2022, and the researchers expanded their scope and study population; the range of subjects included children, nurses, and college students, as well as studies focusing on different types of stress, and emphasizing the handling of stress.

Conclusion: Our findings reveal that the heat of stress research during COVID-19 has declined, and the main research forces come from the United States and China. Additionally, subsequent research should concern more on coping methods with stress, while using more quantitative and qualitative studies in the future.

Keywords: COOC analysis; Cite Space; VOS viewer; bibliometric analysis; stress during COVID-19.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Science and Technology of the Department of Education of Jiangxi Province Fund “A study on the horizontal differentiation of residents’ pro-environmental behaviors based on spatio-temporal trajectory data mining” [Grant numbers GJJ220034].