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

BACKGROUND: The 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 preparednes...

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Autores principales: Ryan, Jillian, Sellak, Hamza, Brindal, Emily
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8274677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34081594
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/29213
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author Ryan, Jillian
Sellak, Hamza
Brindal, Emily
author_facet Ryan, Jillian
Sellak, Hamza
Brindal, Emily
author_sort Ryan, Jillian
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The 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. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 on a sample of Australian adults. METHODS: The 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. RESULTS: In 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<.001); however, the proportion of variance in the sentiment that was explained was very small (<5%). CONCLUSIONS: Participant sentiment toward COVID-19 varied. High rates of neutral and negative sentiment were identified. Positive sentiment was identified but was not as common. Impacts to different areas of people’s lives were identified, with a major emphasis on behavioral regulation and related domains such as social influences, environmental context and resources, and emotions. Findings may inform the development of mental health and social support resources and interventions to help alleviate the psychosocial consequences of disaster response measures.
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spelling pubmed-82746772021-07-26 The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis Ryan, Jillian Sellak, Hamza Brindal, Emily JMIR Public Health Surveill Original Paper BACKGROUND: The 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. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 on a sample of Australian adults. METHODS: The 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. RESULTS: In 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<.001); however, the proportion of variance in the sentiment that was explained was very small (<5%). CONCLUSIONS: Participant sentiment toward COVID-19 varied. High rates of neutral and negative sentiment were identified. Positive sentiment was identified but was not as common. Impacts to different areas of people’s lives were identified, with a major emphasis on behavioral regulation and related domains such as social influences, environmental context and resources, and emotions. Findings may inform the development of mental health and social support resources and interventions to help alleviate the psychosocial consequences of disaster response measures. JMIR Publications 2021-07-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8274677/ /pubmed/34081594 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/29213 Text en ©Jillian Ryan, Hamza Sellak, Emily Brindal. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (https://publichealth.jmir.org), 02.07.2021. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Ryan, Jillian
Sellak, Hamza
Brindal, Emily
The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title_full The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title_fullStr The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title_full_unstemmed The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title_short The Psychosocial Impacts of COVID-19 on a Sample of Australian Adults: Cross-sectional Survey and Sentiment Analysis
title_sort psychosocial impacts of covid-19 on a sample of australian adults: cross-sectional survey and sentiment analysis
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8274677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34081594
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/29213
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