Abstract
Worldwide, previous studies have expressed concerns regarding the broad psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among college students as they are considered an especially vulnerable group. However, few studies have examined the prevalence of, risk of, and protective factors associated with fear of COVID-19 among college students in Europe. We have sought to address gaps in the literature by conducting a cross-sectional survey among 517 college students (79.1% women and 20.9% men) from a public university in the southeast of Spain. Participants were asked to complete the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S) questionnaire and answer questions related to resilience, social support, anxiety, and suicide risk levels using validated scales. The results of the analysis of the variables associated with fear of COVID-19 suggest that, in addition to gender, the factor of anxiety shows a robust positive association and effect with COVID-19 fear (p < 0.001). According to our results, university institutions must adopt support mechanisms to alleviate psychological impacts on students during this pandemic, treating it similarly to other disasters. Implications for social work to reduce COVID-19 fear are also discussed.
Highlights
We aimed to determine the level of COVID-19 fear and assess for associations with protective and risk factors using data between February and March 2021 from 517 college students in
The descriptive statistics of all the scales vary depending on the range or minimum and maximum values of the results obtained: Fear of COVID-19 (M = 18.5; SD = 5.88), Resilience (M = 14.4; SD = 2.85), Social Support (M = 69.3; SD = 13.53), Anxiety (M = 16.8; SD = 5.43), and Suicide (M = 6.3; SD = 3.33)
The independent variable of gender was a classification criteria that was dichotomized between men (n = 108; 20.9%) and women (n = 409; 79.1%), the median point for the resilience scales (M = 15); Social Support (M = 72), Anxiety (M = 16), and the definition of risk for the suicide scale, resulted in both low and high values in the scales used to evaluate the independent variables
Summary
Academic Editors: Lisa Brophy, Gavin Davidson and Jim Campbell. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The World Health Organization [1] declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To be a pandemic on 11 March 2020. This statement came three months after the appearance of COVID-19 in Wuhan (China) [1]. This situation caused unprecedented political decisions in different countries to manage and confront the health emergency.
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