IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0251641.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on university students: Understanding apprehensions through a phenomenographic approach

Author

Listed:
  • Sumbal Shahbaz
  • Muhammad Zeshan Ashraf
  • Rubeena Zakar
  • Florian Fischer
  • Muhammad Zakria Zakar

Abstract

Limited evidence exists to help understand the experiences of university students in relation to the long-term lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For that reason, we conducted a study using a phenomenographic approach in order to understand how university students perceive COVID-19 and the associated lockdown. Data were collected from 25 students in Pakistan. They were asked to demonstrate the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in illustrations. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with these students, to gain further insights into their perspectives on the psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis revealed four interlinked directions for understanding students’ experiences. These themes were: 1) escape into peace, 2) hope for personal freedom, 3) fear of becoming a victim of COVID-19, and 4) concerns regarding education, future career, and opportunities. All four themes were analyzed and condensed into an outcome space, which further gathers the perceptions of students under one theme as “Hope for life while paradoxically living with fear”. Studying the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on students not only highlighted their concerns, but also emphasized the importance of starting regular psychological evaluations and stress-releasing sessions, along with online education to overcome growing depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumbal Shahbaz & Muhammad Zeshan Ashraf & Rubeena Zakar & Florian Fischer & Muhammad Zakria Zakar, 2021. "Psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on university students: Understanding apprehensions through a phenomenographic approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-30, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0251641
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251641
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251641
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251641&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0251641?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0251641. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.