Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Higher Education: Characterizing the Psychosocial Context of the Positive and Negative Affective States Using Classification and Regression Trees

Abstract

Our aim is to analyze the extent to which the psychosocial aspects can characterize the affective states of the teachers, administrative staff, and undergraduate and postgraduate students during the quarantine. A questionnaire was answered by 1,328 people from the community of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Spain. The survey was partially designed ad hoc, collecting indicators related to sociodemographic variables, the impact of COVID on the subjects or in their personal context, the psychosocial context of coexistence and perceived social support, characteristics related to the physical context during the quarantine, and labor conditions. Additionally, it included two validated instruments: the Survey Work-Home Interaction–Nijmegen for Spanish Speaking Countries (SWING-SSC) validated in Spanish and PANAS, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Classification and Regression Trees (CART) were performed to identify which variables better characterize the participants' level of positive and negative affective states. Results according to groups showed that students are the ones who have suffered the most as a result of this situation (temporary employment regulation, higher scores in negative work-home and home-work interaction, lower scores in positive home-work interaction, and negative effects of teleworking). Additionally, they reported a higher mean score in interpersonal conflict and worse scores with regard to negative affective states. Based on sex, women were the ones whose environment was shown to be more frequently affected by the pandemic and who exhibited more negative effects of teleworking. In general terms, participants with the highest scores in negative affective states were those who perceived an increase in conflict and a high negative effect from work spilling over into their personal lives. On the contrary, participants with the highest levels of positive affective states were those with medium to low levels of negative home-work interaction, over 42.5 years old, and with medium to high levels of positive work-home interaction. Our results aim to help higher education to reflect on the need to adapt to this new reality, since the institutions that keep pace with evolving trends will be able to better attract, retain, and engage all the members of the university community in the years ahead.

Motivation of Teleworkers and Non-teleworkers in Times of COVID-19 in Spain: An Exploratory Study Using Non-parametric Analysis and Classification and Regression Trees

“…The results obtained in the fields of education, public administration, and health partially contradict previous studies carried out in Spain, where one of the main complaints voiced by teachers, both at basic educational levels (Trujillo Sáez et al, 2020) and in higher education (Romeo et al, 2021;Tasso et al, 2021), was the lack of technical resources, information, and institutional support. Contrarily, other studies have pointed out that teachers perceived benefits on the use of new technologies and instruments for education, even though they stated that the educational system was not prepared for that sudden change (Obrad and Circa, 2021).…”

“…In addition, organizations should pay special attention to women, given that, as pointed out by Grubanov-Boskovic et al ( 2022) "as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, its adverse implications for gender equality started penetrating not only the dimension of paid work, but also the area of unpaid (domestic and childcare) work" (Grubanov-Boskovic et al, 2022, p. 2). It should be added how women have experienced this period in a particularly negative way, in relation to the imbalance produced by their work and personal obligations, and the effects on their mental health (Esteban-Gonzalo et al, 2020;Romeo et al, 2021).…”

“…The assessment of access to information is confronted with the availability of technological means, which on many occasions were not provided by the companies, at least initially. In addition, it is relevant to note that the limits between work time and personal time were broken during the pandemic (Romeo et al, 2021). Therefore, the participants indicated their own time management as one of the worst valued aspects.…”

Knowledge, Attitude, and Barriers in Distance Education Using Smartphones among Pediatric Dentistry Master Degree students during COVID-19 Pandemic in Egypt: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The worldwide health crisis caused by breakthrough of COVID-19 pandemic dictated the closure of educational institutions in an attempt to limit the virus dissemination. Accordingly, there was a dramatic transition from face-to-face teaching to different online modalities [18,19] .…”

A snapshot sample on how COVID-19 impacted and holds up a mirror to European water education

“…In addition, practical educational elements were canceled (e.g. field excursion, survey among Swedish universities; Fischer, 2020), and COVID-19-related illness and motivational and emotional distress were observed (Aristovnik et al, 2020;Bormann et al, 2021;Marzoli et al, 2021;Romeo et al, 2021), which might have affected knowledge transfer in hydrology education negatively.…”