Abstract

Since the beginning of March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected several populations in the United States with many different hardships. With COVID-19 came the threat of a new disease, job insecurity affecting a large amount of our population, increased financial instability, and misinformation surrounding the new COVID-19 virus, the pandemic left an overwhelming majority of the United States population feeling mentally, physically, and overall exhausted. This study focuses on the already vulnerable and often overlooked population that is college students, and the aim of this study is to better assess the physical and mental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on EKU students and their perceptions of COVID-19 and attitudes toward vaccination. The study was conducted on Eastern Kentucky University’s campus and data was collected using an online Google Forms survey. Within the survey, we assessed college students’ physical health, mental health, overall health, their perceived threat, and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic (questions were asked by implementing the Health Belief Model), and their opinions on the newly developed vaccines. Once the survey was closed the data was analyzed and the results from the survey were consistent with results from other universities' surveys and research which shows that there has been a common struggle among the college student population due to going to school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Semester/Year of Award

Fall 2021

Mentor

Laurel M. Schwartz

Mentor Department Affiliation

Health Promotion and Administration

Access Options

Open Access Thesis

Document Type

Bachelor Thesis

Degree Name

Honors Scholars

Degree Level

Bachelor's

Department

Health Promotion and Administration

IRB Approval Number (if applicable)

004279

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