COVID-19 Pandemic, Perceived Student Stress, and Engagement in Preventative Health Behaviors

NOTE: This project is still in process and the poster has been removed

Today, I will be discussing my master’s thesis research. This research topic is in the realm of health psychology. More specifically, my research covers the COVID-19 pandemic, perceived student stress, and engagement in preventative health behaviors. My research aims to address the question “how does perceived stress in college students play a role in one’s engagement in preventative health behaviors?”
The Health Belief Model is the theoretical framework for my study. This model was first proposed in 1974 by Rosenstock. This model states that whether one engages in preventative health behaviors is based upon six factors: perceived susceptibility, perceived barriers, perceived self-efficacy, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and cues to action. Perceived susceptibility is the extent to which someone believes they are susceptible to acquiring an illness. Perceived barriers are the obstacles that one believes are in the way of them engaging in health preventative health behaviors. Perceived self-efficacy is one’s belief about how capable they are of engaging in preventative health behaviors. Perceived severity is how dangerous an individual believes an illness would be to them if they were to acquire it. Perceived benefits are the benefits that one believes they will acquire by engaging in health preventative behaviors. Finally, cues to action are anything in one’s environment that motivates an individual to engage in preventative health behaviors. So, my study aims to see how this model can be used to predict engagement in preventative behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants have begun to be recruited from Health Psychology and physiology courses online via SONA systems at UNF. The piloting of this study began in March 2021, so we are currently in the process of data collection. The questionnaire contained various scales in regards to resilience, ways of coping, and physical stress symptoms. However, the main focus of my analysis will be in regards to these two scales: Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, 1994) and COVID-19 Prevention Perceived Effectiveness (Prasetyo et al., 2020). The goal of my analysis is to analyze the relationship between perceived stress in college students and COVID-19 prevention perceived effectiveness. We predict that higher levels of perceived stress will lead to more engagement in preventative health behaviors. We also predict that higher levels of perceived stress will lead to a higher understanding of COVID-19.
We chose to collect data from college students because they are a unique population. College students are emerging adults, causing them to experience various factors that contribute to stress (Arnett, 2000). Understanding the role of perceived stress in the engagement of preventative health behaviors is helpful to see what factors affect engagement in these behaviors.