Anxiety in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic: a quantitative study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated changes in university education, which can lead to emotional disturbances, such as anxiety. For the research we aimed the level of anxiety in a COVID-19 pandemic environment in university students. A quantitative study was carried out, using a measurement instrument (Cronbach's alpha of = .9) to determine the degree of state anxiety in 1,460 university students from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. The KMO sample adequacy test (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) was applied, which yielded a high value of 0.954, with a p value = 0.0, which supports the correlation between the variables considered for data processing with a factorial analysis of principal components, the Bartlett's sphericity test was also obtained, which yielded a significance level (p-value) of 0.0. To determine the degree of anxiety, the Spanish adaptation of the STAI (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) was used in its anxiety-state subscale. The main results indicate that the factor of greatest concern for university students is the growth of the pandemic (35.79%). A low level of anxiety was found in 31.77% of the students. The symptoms with the highest scores in the level of anxiety detected were feeling tense and worried; those with the highest standard deviation were feeling oppressed, dazed and upset. Future research is warranted to monitor anxiety rates during the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic.