Open AccessCollege students’ compliance with government measures for social isolation and quarantine during the COVID-19 outbreak: A focus on psychological predictors
Author(s) -
Yura Loscalzo,
Marco Giannini
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1875-9270
pISSN - 1051-9815
DOI - 10.3233/wor-210697
Subject(s) - anxiety , psychological intervention , psychology , government (linguistics) , social distance , mental health , social isolation , clinical psychology , pandemic , affect (linguistics) , residence , compliance (psychology) , social psychology , covid-19 , medicine , psychiatry , demography , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , disease , communication , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
BACKGROUND: To contain the COVID-19 pandemic, government adopted several measures to restrict social contacts including isolation, quarantine, and limitations on movement from location to location around the country. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the degree to which Italian college students agreed and complied with these measures and to determine if psychological variables have influenced compliance. METHODS: We evaluated 6075 students concerning their agreement with the government’s restrictions, as well as their health anxiety, trait positive and negative affect, and current symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress. We performed MANOVAs, ANOVAs, path analysis, and binary logistic regressions. RESULTS: We found some differences in compliance with government restrictions concerning gender, geographic location, and major of study. Psychological variables did not play a significant role in predicting compliance with restriction measures and making a call for medical help. However, health anxiety predicted higher levels of worries about having contracted the virus. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our results, university-based interventions should primarily focus on males to foster compliance with government restriction during a pandemic, or health crisis. College students –Social Sciences students in particular –could benefit from counseling interventions to avoid the development of psychological disorders fueled by pandemic worries.