Exploring Factors That Affected Student Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison of Data-Mining Approaches

Abstract

COVID-19-related school closures caused unprecedented and prolonged disruption to daily life, education, and social and physical activities. This disruption in the life course affected the well-being of students from different age groups. This study proposed analyzing student well-being and determining the most influential factors that affected student well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this aim, we adopted a cross-sectional study designed to analyze the student data from the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS) collected between December 2020 and July 2021 from a large sample of grade 8 or equivalent students from eight countries (n = 20,720), including Burkina Faso, Denmark, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. We first estimated a well-being IRT score for each student in the REDS student database. Then, we used 10 data-mining approaches to determine the most influential factors that affected the well-being of students during the COVID-19 outbreak. Overall, 178 factors were analyzed. The results indicated that the most influential factors on student well-being were multifarious. The most influential variables on student well-being were students’ worries about contracting COVID-19 at school, their learning progress during the COVID-19 disruption, their motivation to learn when school reopened, and their excitement to reunite with friends after the COVID-19 disruption.

Air Cleaners and Respiratory Infections in Schools: A Modeling Study Based on Epidemiologic, Environmental, and Molecular Data

“…Their operating cost-effectiveness in providing clean air could be even higher than that of a ventilation system when compared in parallel with the same air delivery ratings [ 30 ]. Therefore, air cleaners could be a cost-effective public health measure, particularly during pandemics or epidemics when there is greater exposure to respiratory infections and greater concern of becoming infected [ 31 ]. However, their acceptance may be hindered by noise, space limitations, technical issues, and maintenance requirements [ 32 ].…”

Air cleaners and respiratory infections in schools: A modeling study using epidemiological, environmental, and molecular data

“…30 Therefore, air cleaners could be a cost-effective public health measure, particularly during pandemics or epidemics when there is greater exposure to respiratory infections, and greater concern of becoming infected. 31 However, their acceptance may be hindered by noise, space limitations, technical issues, and maintenance requirements. 32 Therefore, investments in professional building ventilation systems are still preferred in the long run.…”