Measuring Students’ Emotional State During the State of Emergency Imposed by COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

AbstractWhen faced with a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is normal for people to have various emotional, cognitive, physical, social, and behavioural reactions. When a university is facing a crisis, its students may be affected. The aim of this study was to measure students’ emotional state during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of the transition from traditional courses to online courses, as imposed by the state of emergency. Based on a survey which took place between the 25th of March 2020 and 30th of April 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, this paper empirically tested the perception of the students from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași regarding the fear of contracting the virus, the self-isolation, the negative educational results, and the effectiveness of online courses during the state of emergency and their impact on students’ emotional state. The results are robust and show that students were, from an emotional point of view, negatively affected by the lack of socialisation at university. Another important finding is that the fear of negative educational results also harmed students’ emotional state, while the perceived effectiveness of online courses proved to have a positive and statistically significant effect. The results also show that the fear of contracting the virus did not have a statistically significant effect on the students’ emotions.KeywordsEmotional statePerceptionsCOVID-19The state of emergencySelf-isolation