An Exploratory Factor Analysis to Investigate the Impact on College Students’ Stress Levels During COVID-19

• Activity Number: 443 - Latent Variables, Causal Inference, Machine Learning and Other Topics in Mental Health Statistics
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 12, 2021 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Mental Health Statistics Section
• Author(s): Edward Huynh* and Bowen Liu and Chengcheng Li and Qing Wu
• Companies: University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Keywords: Exploratory Factor Analysis; Mental Health; Regression Analysis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant ripples within the academic learning environment. Current research has demonstrated that it has led to elevated stress levels among college students due to the abrupt switch to online instruction. Of particular interest is the need to understand the impact of the pandemic on stress among certain sub-populations of college students. The scope of this study is to analyze perceived stress levels of college students via exploratory factor analysis on a survey study of college students collected at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After performing EFA on the results of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), we obtained a 2-factor model. We subsequently analyzed the factors with respect to various socio-demographic groups using stepwise linear regression and found that sex and age (p < 0.01) were significant in predicting each of the factors. We will also provide results from performing a modified group LASSO regression.