Contact Information
Researcher: Layne Barton
Email: bartolay000@stu.sumnersd.org
Phone: (253) 220-7929
Instructor: Josh Gaydos
Email: joshua_gaydos@sumnersd.org
During the Covid-19 pandemic, students were forced into isolation due to the lockdown. The lockdown may have negatively changed students’ perspectives on their health and their ability to share, express, and or acknowledge their own health status. Many students may be reluctant to share, express or acknowledge their current health perspective during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of the lockdown, many were forced into isolation, which resulted in a negative major shift in overall health and lifestyle. This problem may have shifted students' mindsets in a negative direction as they were unprepared, and under-educated on how to deal with their health, even with many resources available such as physical education, health courses, counselors, therapists, and others.
How has the covid-19 pandemic affected students' perception of their personal overall health?
When evaluating the shift of the perspective of overall health (physical, mental, and social wellbeing) in students during the Covid-19 pandemic, many students will report having a negative shift in their perspective on health because many students have been staying in isolation
Health: An individual's complete state of Physical, Mental, and social wellbeing.
Covid-19: Also known as coronavirus, which is a disease that can severely affect the lungs.
Pandemic: An infectious disease spread over a majority of the world, in this case, covid-19.
High School students: adolescents ages 14-19 in most cases.
High school students are the next generation of workers in our communities. Gaining insight into how they view their health due to the pandemic may change how medical professionals perform more personalized and holistic care to their patients in the future.
This inquiry was used to address high school students’ perspectives on and around the topic of their own health and the relationship between the students’ perspectives on health and the Covid-19 pandemic. To gather data, a non-experimental design was used along with a content analysis for both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the data. A google form survey was the tool used to collect the data. The survey was completely anonymous and does not harm any participants. This data will be used to determine any trends in the proposed student body population of 1463 students.
A non-experimental style was chosen because of the many variables involved in the study. The variables included the three factors of health which include physical, mental, and social well-being. Furthermore, students will be able to elaborate on their responses and write about their real-life experiences. Content analysis is also used due to the fact that student-generated responses will be compared and contrasted with one another to create a common trend for the proposed initial population.
The survey consisted of 22 overall questions that included multiple-choice, Likert scale, and short answer questions, all of which relate to the 3 factors of health: physical, mental, and social. There are also 3 blocking questions, with two of these questions related to consent, and one question related to how old the adolescent is. The multiple-choice questions and the Likert scale questions allow for quantitative data, which will be used for determining a basic trend within the population. After each question, there will be a short answer response field (If an “others” option was not present in the question the short answer response field was provided), and these short answer questions allow the student to answer the question on their own words. Thus, giving a personal perspective on their own health to further develop their answers. The results in the qualitative data will be compared to other student responses. This comparison will manifest common in-depth trends for the population answering the survey questions.
124 responses were received in total.
The most viable data came from questions related to Physical, Mental, and social wellbeing.
Screen time use in students is nearly double that of students who utilize their time for other activities. 87% or 108 out of 124 students reported watching videos or shorts. Shorts, meaning short videos such as Tik Tok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts, whereas students who reported doing other activities were at or below 50%. 65 out of 124 students before the pandemic, reported having a 6 to 8 rating range which means they were slightly above “neutral” leaning toward a “good” perspective on their physical health.
However, after the pandemic 65 out of 124 students reported having an 8 to 10 rating range which means that these students had a “good” physical health perspective. This indicated that there was an increase in physical health from before the pandemic to after the pandemic. Before the pandemic, students reported being in an above “neutral” mental health state, with a peak of 27 respondents reporting an 8 on the rating scale for their mental health. Also, 100 students reported 5 to 10 on the rating scale, which indicated that all but 24 students had an above “neutral” to “good” perspective on their mental health before the pandemic. When comparing this to after the pandemic, the peak of students' mental health state was at a 5, which is “neutral”, and between the rating scale of 5-10. 91 students responded in this section which indicated that there was a slightly negative shift in their perspective on mental health from before the pandemic to after the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, the peak was at 8, with a reported 8 to 10 rating range for students’ perspectives on social wellbeing. This means that half of the students (60 students) responded to being above “neutral” to having a “good” perspective on their social wellbeing. When comparing this to the student's social well-being after the pandemic, there is a slightly negative shift in the peak of responses with 21 respondents with a 7 rating.
Most common responses for Physical Health
“Started to do bad habits that were previously broken”
“Sleep schedules and Eating schedules were thrown off balance.”
“I’ve become a lot less lazy since the pandemic started because I was able to go outside more, and walk my dog.”
“My physical health has not changed due to the pandemic.”
“I stopped caring about myself as much because I didn't go anywhere so I would start letting myself go a bit.”
“When I’m bored I used to just eat everything around me.”
“My physical health has evolved a lot during the years, and thanks to Covid I was able to actually focus on my goals, and because I had so much time on my hands I had no choice but to actually do something about it.”
“I used to go to the gym frequently but have stopped because of Covid.”
“I had no motivation to work out so I didn’t. I don't even have to get out of bed to do school so I didn’t. Covid restricted me from working out in a public gym.”
“I felt more motivated to work out at home since I didn't have much to do.”
Most common responses for Mental health
“In all seriousness, I became severely depressed, had worsened anxiety, and became burnt out due to school. Being with my family all the time also negatively impacted my health, as I was judged and yelled out for a lack of motivation due to depression.”
“I became severely depressed and not only did I get diagnosed with depression I got diagnosed with severe anxiety.”
“I got to about a 1 during the pandemic but now I think I’ve gotten through it. Being in quarantine really forced me to take a deep look at myself and it was a rocky journey.”
“I learned a lot about myself over the pandemic and matured a lot, so I feel I benefitted over this time.”
“Covid 19 made my mental health better but worse in different senses as I stayed home and got time to focus on myself but I also suffered from finding out my thing and feelings of loneliness.”
“I’ve lost a lot of friends because we weren't able to hang out.”
“My mental health went up during the pandemic because I was able to stay at home and learn new skills.”
“I've become more stressed, and it's way harder to focus and accomplish things school-related. I don't have as much motivation as I used to.”
“I was at my worst mental health state during lockdown but lockdown gave me a chance to find ways to help myself in order to prepare to go back into regular life.”
“It hurt my mental health a lot due to the stress of doing work at home as well as the lack of human interaction.”
Most common responses for Social Wellbeing
“My social interactions and overall self-confidence skyrocketed throughout the pandemic and I just got carefree about how other people thought about me.”
“I personally think it positively affected my social skills because I had pretty bad social anxiety before and the lockdown helped me realize all that I took for granted. So, going back to school, I tried to put myself out there more.”
“Taught me to be more open and talk to others more because you never know when you’ll see them again or what their going through.”
“With the pandemic, I was able to become more mature because I needed to keep myself and others in my family healthy”
“It caused me to become even less talkative in social situations; due to the lack of interaction I had with others around me during the lockdown”
“Once we got back, everyone was really eager to socialize so it made it easy to talk to people”
“Without being in school for 2 years I very much so have noticed a difference. I find it hard to start conversations with new people and interact with people my age.”
“Due to making friends online, It was very hard for me to transition back to making friends in real life, or face to face.”
“I think it is a little more intimidating meeting new people, especially with masks.”
“I struggled with making friends when we came back to school”
A conclusion cannot be drawn due to an insignificant amount of participants. Thus, concluding that further research will need to be conducted regarding students' perspectives on health. This will provide more in-depth data that properly represents the student body population. With the data collected in the study, I had to also refute a part of my hypothesis which stated; When evaluating the shift of the perspective of overall health (physical, mental, and social wellbeing) in students during the Covid-19 pandemic, many students will report having a negative shift in their perspective of their health because many students have been forced into isolation which eliminated or minimized their social interactions with family and peers. This is because students’ perspectives on physical health did in fact have a positive increase. Along with this, students who have reported that they had a positive increase in their physical health also reported that their mental, and social health has decreased during these times due to staying in isolation.
This research can be utilized to gain a better understanding of what students have gone through during the pandemic, and what their mindset is like in regards to their personal health. In Radez’s work, two-thirds of students who have experienced health problems do not seek help (Radez, 2020). Parents, teachers, and counselors can use my research to look at the common trends associated with my data to subtly help those students who are not asking for help.
If I was to do this project again I would expand the population size. I would ask students from other schools to participate in this research. I would also ask more questions pertaining to the last question asked on my survey which was, do you (the students) feel as if your health is still important to you? Asking more questions pertaining to whether or not the students still view their health as important is vital information that I was missing in this survey. Furthermore, this would provide a more in-depth view of high school students' perspectives on their own health and what they are doing to improve their health, so they are healthier and happier individuals.
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