Change in Happiness and Well-being Levels of College Students in India Due to Covid-19 Lockdown

Abstract

Covid-19 has affected the lives of people worldwide. With the increasing number of people getting infected around the world, India too is facing a steep ascent in the curve of rising cases (Ministry of Health and Family Affair, 2020). The period of lockdown initiated by the Indian government as a preventive measure led to a large number of people experiencing a change in their mental health, especially among the youth (“COVID-19: Indirect adverse effects”, 2020). The aim of this study is to fathom the ‘happiness and well-being’ levels from the Initial to the last stages of the lockdown in India. We examined and compared the changes in the happiness and well-being levels of college going students from the first 15 days of the lockdown to the last 15 days by collecting data in the form of standardised questionnaires namely General Happiness Scale, Positive Affect & Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and Life Satisfaction Scale via Google forms using a convenience sampling method. We applied Dependent-T Test using SPSS to analyse the result. We hypothesize that there is going to be a significant change in the happiness and well-being levels among college going individuals. The results have been discussed in the paper in the light of literature review.