Lockdown and Social Work Students: A study on the perception of Social Work students about Lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak
Authors:   Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Divya Divya , Pradhan Asutosh ,   Central University of Himachal Pradesh
Published: September 2024

COVID-19 is not only a health-related issue but it has come along with a couple of problems to everyone may it be children, youth, adults (women, men), or elderly but only youth and students of social work in particular are considered in the present study. The researcher has taken into consideration the students of social work as students are viewed as the future of any nation and when the students are from the field of social work, they are expected to work for the betterment of society, hence their perception and their viewpoints both are important. Many researches have been made to acknowledge the situation of youth, their coping strategies, and suggested interventions during this pandemic, while majority of researches focus on mental health and fewer studies shows the overall challenges on youth and on social work students in particular nor about the contribution of social workers towards society betterment. The present study is designed keeping in view the above-mentioned gaps and thus framed the objectives based on these gaps pertaining to the purpose of the study. Objectives: The present study aimed to focus on the following domains of the pandemic situation: 1. To explore the lived experiences of social work students during lockdown. 2. To determine the various challenges faced by the social work students during COVID-19 Pandemic. 3. To ascertain any contribution(s) made by the social work students towards society during COVID-19 Pandemic. 4. To know about any change into the lives of social work students in post-lockdown period. 5. To collect a viewpoint of social work students about their perception of public reaction during and after lockdown. Methodology: The present study was conducted with the students of social work and was purely quantitative in nature. The questionnaire pertaining to the independent and dependent variables and related to the objectives of the study was prepared via google forms and the link was then sent to 120 social work students from different universities of north India through email out of 87 were received back with fully informed consent. The spread sheet of the data collected was then extracted from google forms which was then edited, classified and analyzed using Microsoft Excel and tabulated for univariate and multivariate data analysis. Results: Results shows that the students of social work have experienced various challenges during the lockdown period. These challenges were categorized as physical, psychological, financial and the studies related issues. Major problems experienced by the social work students were physical inactivity (60.9%) and due to that they are gaining weight leading to obesity (42.5%). To cope up with these problems, majority of the students opted for yoga, and exercise (43.68%). Talking about psychological problems, the students developed stress (56.32%) and anxiety (40.23%). Attending online classes is an added challenge for students as it is a new concept and out of the routine activity and thus, they face difficulty in concentration (63.22%) as there are several distractions present at home (44.83%). Majority of the students complained that their studies got affected in online classes as there was signal problem (66.67%). Sitting at one place for the whole day leads to back pain and increased screen time for the attending online leads to impact the eyesight of the students (32.18%). Besides, the student social workers reported that they have developed a distance from their social relations (37.93%) and they are experiencing social isolation (20.69%). Financial depreciation was most common among general public and so on students as they reported that they were not getting pocket money due to financial crisis in their families. Besides all these problems the student social worker have done their duty and majority have contributed to the society in one or the other way. When lockdown got over, majority (74.71%) of the student got relaxed and felt that their life will get resumed now while 25.29% were still anxious. Majority (80.46%) have started their concurrent fieldwork with all the precautionary measures. The students’ perception regarding public behavior was also assessed and they perceived that 59.77% public was relaxed to hear that the lockdown is over and feel that COVID-19 is over while the rest 40.23% were showing the same behaviour as earlier; aggressive, irritable and anxious about the disease.