Chinese College Students Have Higher Anxiety in New Semester of Online Learning During COVID-19: A Machine Learning Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous loss starting from early this year. This article aims to investigate the change of anxiety severity and prevalence among non-graduating undergraduate students in the new semester of online learning during COVID-19 in China and also to evaluate a machine learning model based on the XGBoost model. A total of 1172 non-graduating undergraduate students aged between 18 and 22 from 34 provincial-level administrative units and 260 cities in China were enrolled onto this study and asked to fill in a sociodemographic questionnaire and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) twice, respectively, during February 15 to 17, 2020, before the new semester started, and March 15 to 17, 2020, 1 month after the new semester based on online learning had started. SPSS 22.0 was used to conduct t-test and single factor analysis. XGBoost models were implemented to predict the anxiety level of students 1 month after the start of the new semester. There were 184 (15.7%, Mean = 58.45, SD = 7.81) and 221 (18.86%, Mean = 57.68, SD = 7.58) students who met the cut-off of 50 and were screened as positive for anxiety, respectively, in the two investigations. The mean SAS scores in the second test was significantly higher than those in the first test (P < 0.05). Significant differences were also found among all males, females, and students majoring in arts and sciences between the two studies (P < 0.05). The results also showed students from Hubei province, where most cases of COVID-19 were confirmed, had a higher percentage of participants meeting the cut-off of being anxious. This article applied machine learning to establish XGBoost models to successfully predict the anxiety level and changes of anxiety levels 4 weeks later based on the SAS scores of the students in the first test. It was concluded that, during COVID-19, Chinese non-graduating undergraduate students showed higher anxiety in the new semester based on online learning than before the new semester started. More students from Hubei province had a different level of anxiety than other provinces. Families, universities, and society as a whole should pay attention to the psychological health of non-graduating undergraduate students and take measures accordingly. It also confirmed that the XGBoost model had better prediction accuracy compared to the traditional multiple stepwise regression model on the anxiety status of university students.

Demographic, gadget and internet profiles as determinants of disease and consequence related COVID-19 anxiety among Filipino college students

“…Our present study suggests that younger students and those enrolled in lower year levels exhibit higher levels of consequence-related COVID-19 anxiety compared to older counterparts. This finding is congruent with the study of Wang et al ( 2020 ) that suggested that freshmen and sophomores scored higher in terms of anxiety, which reflects the uncertainties younger students have in terms of coping with the online pedagogy, while also transitioning into college life, both of which are affected because of the pandemic (Tria, 2020 ).…”

“…As regards to gender, females were found to have higher scores of consequence-related COVID-19 anxiety compared to their male counterparts. This finding is reflective of how quarantine and online schooling due to the pandemic can increase the home making and caretaking responsibilities of women in the household (Wenham et al, 2020 ), which causes the strain and anxiety among females as seen in other COVID-19 studies as well (McElroy et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Tee et al, 2020 ).…”

Impacts of the Covid‐19 pandemic on the health of university students

“…There is now a large body of published, peer‐reviewed research papers assessing the impacts of the pandemic on university students, the majority of these are surveys investigating topics such as student adaptations to online learning, 9–16 Covid‐19 impacts on mental health, 4,5,17–26 or less frequently, both of these factors in parallel 27–30 . Other studies that have taken a broader approach to understand how the pandemic has altered academic, societal, health, lifestyle and behavioural elements of the student experience 31–35 .…”

“…There is now a large body of published, peer-reviewed research papers assessing the impacts of the pandemic on university students, the majority of these are surveys investigating topics such as student adaptations to online learning, [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Covid-19 impacts on mental health, 4,5,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] or less frequently, both of these factors in parallel. [27][28][29][30] Other studies that have taken a broader approach to understand how the pandemic has altered academic, societal, health, lifestyle and behavioural elements of the student experience. [31][32][33][34][35] In this commentary we seek to focus more on the medical impacts, and particularly the enormous practical public health challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic for university students.…”

The Impact of Covid19 Pandemic, Financial Wellness, and Online Teaching on The Mental Health of Lebanese Schoolteachers

“…This also re ects the di culties that face teachers every day. Online education also increased anxiety rates in students, as a study in china showed [39].Anxiety was also highly correlated with the fear of Covid19 (p < 0.001). Similar result was also reached in a study in China [37].…”