College students' stress and health in the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of academic workload, separation from school, and fears of contagion

The COVID-19 pandemic has unhinged the lives of people across the globe. In particular, more than 30 million Chinese college students are home-schooling, yet there is little understanding of how academic workload, separation from school, and fears of contagion lead to a decrease in their health. Thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-02, Vol.16 (2), p.e0246676-e0246676
Main Authors: Yang, Chunjiang, Chen, Aobo, Chen, Yashuo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Attachment
Biology and Life Sciences
Causes of
China
College campuses
College students
Colleges & universities
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - psychology
COVID-19 - transmission
Cross-Sectional Studies
Disease transmission
Distance learning
Education, Distance
Environmental stress
Epidemics
Fear & phobias
Female
Humans
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental Health
Online instruction
Pandemics
Parents & parenting
Separation
Separation anxiety
Social Sciences
Stress
Stress (Psychology)
Stress, Psychological - epidemiology
Stress, Psychological - etiology
Students
Students - psychology
Surveys
Teenagers
Universities
Workloads
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic has unhinged the lives of people across the globe. In particular, more than 30 million Chinese college students are home-schooling, yet there is little understanding of how academic workload, separation from school, and fears of contagion lead to a decrease in their health. This study examined the relationships between Chinese college students' three critical stressors and two types of health in the COVID-19 pandemic context. We used a three-wave lagged design with a one-week interval. All the constructs were assessed by self-report in anonymous surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic. College students were asked to report their demographic information, academic workload, separation from school, fears of contagion, perceived stress, and health. The results of this study showed that academic workload, separation from school, and fears of contagion had negative effects on college students' health via perceived stress. In the COVID-19 crisis, multiple prevention and control measures focusing on college students may lead them to have different degrees of stress and health problems. Our results enrich the literature on stress and health and offer novel practical implications for all circles of the society to ensure students' health under the context of the COVID-19 epidemic.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0246676