The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis

Autor: Jillian Ryan, Hamza Sellak, Emily Brindal
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, Vol 7, Iss 7, p e29213 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2369-2960
DOI: 10.2196/29213
Popis: BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has had enormous impacts on people’s lives, including disruptions to their normal ways of behaving, working, and interacting with others. Understanding and documenting these experiences is important to inform the ongoing response to COVID-19 and disaster preparedness efforts. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to examine the psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 on a sample of Australian adults. MethodsThe data analyzed were derived from a larger cross-sectional survey of Australian adults that was administered during the month of May 2020. Participants (N=3483) were asked in which ways COVID-19 had most greatly impacted them; the responses produced a text data set containing 1 COVID-19 impact story for each participant, totaling 86,642 words. Participants also completed assessments of their sociodemographic characteristics (sex, age, financial stress), level of concern related to COVID-19, personality trait profile, and satisfaction with life. Impact stories were analyzed using sentiment analysis and compared against the Theoretical Domains Framework to determine the most frequently impacted life domains. Finally, a multinomial regression analysis, stratified by participant sex, was conducted to identify the associations of psychological and demographic socializations with sentiment toward COVID-19. ResultsIn total, 3483 participants completed the survey, the majority of whom were female (n=2793, 80.2%). Participants’ impact stories were most commonly categorized as neutral (1544/3483, 44.3%), followed by negative (1136/3483, 32.6%) and positive (802/3483, 23.1%). The most frequently impacted life domains included behavioral regulation, environmental context and resources, social influences, and emotions, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting these areas of participants’ lives the most. Finally, the regression results suggested that for women, lower satisfaction with life and higher financial stress were associated with increased likelihood of negative, rather than positive, sentiment (P
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