The Impact of COVID-19 on Anxiety in Chinese University Students
Open accessAbstract
COVID-19 had become a pandemic raising concerns of widespread panic and increasing anxiety and stress in individuals all over the world (WHO, 2020). Lots of countries had closed their schools. As the first country to do so, Chinese colleges and universities were making use of different modes of learning, including online-learning based on different platforms to achieve the goal suggested by Ministry of Education in China, “suspending classes without suspending learning”, since middle February. This paper is the first one which aims to investigate the anxiety of Chinese university students after the outbreak of COVID-19 right before the start of new spring term. 3611 university students (female: male = 1.48:1) aged between 18 to 24 from all over China were enrolled to this study from a top university in China. The Self-Rating Anxiety Scale – SAS (Zung, 1971) was used to assess anxiety two days before the start of new spring term in middle February. All four-year undergraduate students were included in the study. The mean SAS score was 40.53 (SD = 10.15), significantly higher than the national norm (Mean = 29.78, SD = 10.07, p =<.001), and there were still 557 (15.43%, Mean = 58.75, SD = 8.9) students met the cutoff of 50 and were screened positive. Comparisons among sexes, grades and majors were also conducted. Significant differences were found between all males and all female (p =<.001), and between all students majoring arts and sciences in the anxiety sample (n = 557, p = 0.05). The results also showed that the mean SAS scores were not correlated with the regions they came from / lived in. This study concluded that the Chinese university students showed higher anxiety for COVID-19.
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Undergraduate students in lockdown suffered increasing severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms, manifested in poorer sleep quality, poorer academic performance and increased suicidal thoughts.
“undergraduate students in lockdown, namely that they suffered increasing severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms [48], manifested in poorer sleep quality, poorer academic performance and increased suicidal thoughts in the university populations [49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58].”
From Relationships between psychopathology, psychological process variables, and sociodemographic variables and comparison of quarantined and non-quarantined groups of malaysian university students in the covid-19 pandemic (2021) · cites this paper as [49]
The Results (Overall SAS Mean Scores; page unavailable) report higher anxiety scores in Chinese undergraduates than the national norm. But the study measured anxiety at one time point, so it does not establish increasing severity over time, and it did not measure depressive symptoms. The sleep, academic-performance, and suicidal-thoughts claims are attached to other citations, not this one. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCollege students had higher anxiety levels compared to the general population after the outbreak of COVID-19.
“The results of a survey revealed that college students had higher anxiety levels compared to the general population after the outbreak of COVID-19.”
COVID-19 had negative psychological impacts on Chinese college students' anxiety levels.
“This implied that COVID-19 had negative psychological impacts on Chinese college students’ anxiety levels [40].”
With the exception of a few studies, notably from China, there is sparse evidence of the psychological or mental health effects of the current pandemic on college students.
“with the exception of a few studies, notably from China [10-12], there is sparse evidence of the psychological or mental health effects of the current pandemic on college students”
From Effects of COVID-19 on College Students’ Mental Health in the United States: Interview Survey Study (2020) · cites this paper as [12]
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“…addition to this condition, restrictive social and public health measures, changes in night sleep, the use of psychotropic drugs, the search for psychological help, and behavioral disengagement contributed to moderate or worsened anxiety symptoms, like those of generalized anxiety disorder [14,15].”
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- Authors
- Wang, C., & Zhao, H.
- Affiliations
- Nankai University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Zhao, Hong
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2020-05-22
- Volume
- 11
- Pages
- 1168-1168
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7259378
- OpenAlex
- W3027104877
- Cited by
- 621
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 52 · 2023: 113 · 2022: 188 · 2021: 190 · 2020: 36
- FWCI
- 52.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Nankai University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Student Stress and Coping
- Social Sciences › Education › Education during COVID-19 pandemic
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety, university students, Chinese students, school closures, online learning, Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, sex differences, academic major differences, mental health during pandemic
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