Emotional impact of delay in entrance examination on intermediate students – Another hard strike of COVID-19

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a major health issue globally. In order to contain it, there was a lockdown and consequently shutdown of many educational institutions and delays in examinations. It particularly influenced students’ psychological health which we studied in our research. Objective: To assess the emotional impact of delay of entrance examination on intermediate students of Federal Capital and Punjab and to find its association with demographic variables. Materials and Methods: Students who had registered themselves, whether they appeared in the entrance examination or not, were selected by non-probability convenience sampling in this cross-sectional descriptive study. Our online Google form included an explanation of study objectives, consent of the student and a section on the demographic variables of the students. Anxiety was assessed by using GAD-7 and PHQ-9 was utilized to assess depression. Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to assess burnout .Insomnia Severity Index was used to asses insomnia. Descriptive statistics were applied by SPSS v.25.Chisquare was applied to compare variables of emotional impact with socio-demographic variables. p≤0.05 was taken as significant. Results: Among the total of 196 participants, 64 (32.1 %) were male and 132 (67.1 %) were female with a mean age of 18.9 ± 0.93 years. Anxiety, depression, burnout, and insomnia (mild to severe) were present among 136 (69.4%), 173 (88.3%), 185 (94.4%), and 115 (58.6%) of the participants correspondingly. A noteworthy association was established between the students who joined online classes for entrance examination preparation and those at risk of developing burnout (p=0.039). The frequency of sub-threshold and moderately severe insomnia in female students of intermediate was higher. Conclusion: Due to the long-lasting pandemic situation and measures such as lockdown and repeated delays in exams, many students were suffering from emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, and burnout.