An official website of the United States government
Beginning in early 2020, the novel coronavirus was the subject of frequent and sustained news coverage. Building on prior literature on the stress-inducing effects of consuming news during a large-scale crisis, we used network analysis to investigate the association between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) news consumption, COVID-19-related psychological stress, worries about oneself and one’s loved ones getting COVID-19, and sleep quality. Data were collected in March 2020 from 586 adults (45.2% female; 72.9% White) recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk in the U.S. Participants completed online surveys assessing attitudes and behaviors related to COVID-19 and a questionnaire assessing seven domains of sleep quality. Networks were constructed using partial regularized correlation matrices. As hypothesized, COVID-19 news consumption was positively associated with COVID-19-related psychological stress and concerns about one’s loved ones getting COVID-19. However, there were very few associations between COVID-19 news consumption and sleep quality indices, and gender did not moderate any of the observed relationships. This study replicates and extends previous findings that COVID-19-news consumption is linked with psychological stress related to the pandemic, but even under such conditions, sleep quality can be spared due to the pandemic allowing for flexibility in morning work/school schedules.
more »
« less
Children and the COVID-19 Pandemic
This project explores how children and youth below the age of 18 sought to help others during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used the data included in this publication to answer research questions such as “How did children in the U.S. help others and themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic?” and “What issues were children in the U.S. concerned about during the COVID-19 pandemic?” This project includes a data dictionary and a dataset that summarizes a unique collection of 115 news articles focused on the helping behaviors and key concerns of children in the U.S. during the pandemic. The articles appeared in print or online news sources between 2020 and 2023. We searched for media coverage using terms such as “kids,” “help,” “volunteer,” “actions,” “pandemic,” and “COVID-19.” Over time we refined and added additional search terms based on emergent themes such as “raising money,” “making personal protective equipment,” and “helping with homework.” We limited our searches by language (English), geography (the United States), and time (an article had to be published between January 2020, when the virus was first detected in the U.S., and November 2023, when we ended our searches for the dataset). When we identified news coverage that fit our definition of helping behaviors, we saved a PDF of the article (all PDFs are available upon request from the PI). Information included in this dataset is summarized as follows: (1) article citation and link; (2) article synopsis; (3) information on the child or children featured in the article; (4) summary of key helping behaviors or other actions taken by children during the pandemic; (5) information on who children were trying to help or what type of change they were attempting to influence; (6) quotes from children or youth; and (7) notations of photos, videos, or links to additional resources. The envisioned audience for this data includes social science and public health researchers, journalists, and policy makers with an interest in children and the pandemic, specifically, or disasters and altruism, more broadly.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1635593
- PAR ID:
- 10510388
- Publisher / Repository:
- Designsafe-CI
- Date Published:
- Edition / Version:
- 1
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- COVID-19 Children Youth Helping Behaviors Volunteerism Inequality Qualitative Content Analysis United States Altruism Media Analysis
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- DesignSafe Cyberinfrastructure
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)The COVID-19 crisis has revealed weaknesses and placed great stress on the agri-food system in the U.S. Many believe that it could be a catalyst event that leads to structural changes to improve the food system’s resilience. We use a sample of 220 articles published in prominent national newspapers and agricultural trade journals from March to May 2020 to explore the extent to which farmer responses to COVID-19 covered in the media represent examples of resistant, adaptive, or transformative strategies. The pandemic disrupted the U.S. food system and impacted farmers by reducing access to markets, lowering commodity prices, restricting access to farmworker labor, and shifting consumer demand. Media coverage of farmer responses to these stressors were coded into three alternative pathways: (i) reactive or buffering responses, (ii) adaptive responses; and (iii) transformative responses. Most news media coverage focused on the pandemic’s disruptive impacts on the U.S. food system, related negative impacts on farmers, and short-term responses by institutional actors, including policy-makers and food supply chain industry actors. Farmer responses to pandemic stressors were mentioned less frequently than farmer impacts and responses by institutional actors. The most common examples of farmer responses highlighted in the media reflected farmer reactive and buffering behaviors, which were mentioned significantly more frequently than adaptive or transformative responses. National newspapers were more likely to cover farmer responses and present examples of adaptive and transformative strategies compared to agricultural trade journals. Our findings suggest that news media coverage in the early months of the pandemic largely characterized the event as a rapid onset ‘natural’ disaster that created severe negative impacts. Media devoted more attention to short-term policy responses designed to mitigate these impacts than to farmer responses (in general) or to discussion of the deeper structural causes of and potential solutions to the vulnerabilities revealed by the pandemic. In this way, both national newspaper and agricultural trade journal coverage seems to promote frames that reduce the likelihood of the pandemic becoming the seed of a more resilient system.more » « less
-
Limited research has been conducted on the mental health concerns of frontline and essential workers and their children during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (U.S.). This study examined the association between working on the frontlines in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic (March to July 2020) and personal crisis text concerns (e.g., self-harm, suicidal thoughts, anxiety/stress, and substance abuse) for frontline essential workers and the children of frontline workers. We used a novel data set from a crisis texting service, Crisis Text Line (CTL), that is widely used throughout the U.S. Generalized Estimating Equations examined the individual association between eight specific crisis types (Depression, Stress/Anxiety, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Substance Abuse, Isolation, Relationship Issues, and Abuse) and being in frontline work or being a child of a frontline worker during the early phase of the pandemic. Using CTL concerns as a proxy for the prevalence of mental health issues, we found that children of workers, specifically the youngest demographic (13 years and under), females, and non-conforming youth had a higher risk of specific crisis events during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, Hispanic children of workers reported higher rates of stress/anxiety, whereas African American children of workers had higher rates of abuse and depression. Frontline workers had a higher risk of suicidal thoughts, and the risk of crisis events was generally highest for non-binary, transgender, and male users. Increases in CTL usage among frontline workers were noted across 7–28 days after spikes in local COVID-19 cases. The research to date has focused on the mental health of frontline essential workers, but our study highlights troubling trends in psychological stress among children of these workers. Supportive interventions and mental health resources are needed not only for frontline essential workers but for their children too.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Little research has examined the mental health risks of concurrent disasters. For example, disasters like wildfires have been shown to have a strong association with psychological symptoms—the 2020 U.S. Western wildfire season was the worst on record and occurred while the country was still navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. We implemented two quasi-experimental analyses, an interrupted time series analysis, and a difference-in-difference analysis to evaluate the impacts of wildfires and COVID-19 on mental health crisis help-seeking patterns. Both methods showed no statistical association between exposure to wildfires and the seeking of mental health support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results highlighted that 2020 wildfires were not associated with an acute increase in crisis texts for youth in the two months after the events, likely due to an already elevated text volume in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 throughout the fall wildfire season (Aug to Oct 2020). Future research is needed outside of the context of the pandemic to understand the effects of extreme and concurrent climatic events on adolescent mental health, and targeted interventions are required to ensure youth and adolescents are receiving adequate support during these types of crisis events.more » « less
-
Camacho-Rivera, Marlene (Ed.)This study explored relations between COVID-19 news source, trust in COVID-19 information source, and COVID-19 health literacy in 194 STEM-oriented adolescents and young adults from the US and the UK. Analyses suggest that adolescents use both traditional news (e.g., TV or newspapers) and social media news to acquire information about COVID-19 and have average levels of COVID-19 health literacy. Hierarchical linear regression analyses suggest that the association between traditional news media and COVID-19 health literacy depends on participants’ level of trust in their government leader. For youth in both the US and the UK who used traditional media for information about COVID-19 and who have higher trust in their respective government leader (i.e., former US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson) had lower COVID-19 health literacy. Results highlight how youth are learning about the pandemic and the importance of not only considering their information source, but also their levels of trust in their government leaders.more » « less
