DISTANSUNDERVISNING – FÖR VISSA STIMULERANDE FÖR ANDRA DEPRIMERANDE En kvantitativ studie om gymnasieungdomars psykiska hälsa i förhållande till distansundervisning

Abstract

In 2020 the world was hit by a pandemic which caused the Swedish government to force all high schools to carry out their education through internet to enable the students to study from home. This survey study aimed to examine correlations between different variables such as student’s perception of distant education, their psychological health, school performance, home environment and different spare time activities. 137 students from second and third year in high school answered our survey. All the respondents had experienced distant education during the pandemic. The program SPSS was used to identify correlations between variables in the data. The result was analyzed through an interactionist theoretical point of view which contained theories such as sense of coherence, theory of recognition and relational social psychology. This study shows that 72% of the questioned students felt that distant education had affected their psychological wellbeing, 54% in a negative way and 16% in a positive way. Students with good study environment had a more positive perception of their psychological health and enjoyed distant education more than students with less favorable home environment. Students who were used to hang out with friends on their spare time experienced a more negative development of their psychological health due to distant education than other students. Likewise, students who desired to meet their classmates also experienced a more negative development of their psychological health than other students. Our conclusion is that distant education results in less social interaction for these high school students which can lead to lack of recognition and low sense of coherence thus their wellbeing can deteriorate because of distant education. Students home environments were already unequal, and these home conditions were amplified when students were forced to study from home.