Analysis of factors influencing college students' online class anxiety in the COVID-19 epidemic

Abstract Objective: This research analyzed the current anxiety situation and its influencing factors of online home classes among college students in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic. The study aims to prevent psychological disorders and improve the efficiency of college students online classes . Methods : We developed a questionnaire on the factors affecting anxiety in online classes for college students. A total of 225 college students participated in the survey. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to analyze the data. Results : The anxiety score of college students was (97.19 ± 18.60). Factor analysis on the 25 questions in the questionnaire according to the KMO statistic 0.904 and Bartlett's spherical test (p < 0.05). Six common factors: epidemic (13. 914%), online course model (12.601%), the external environment (11.397%), psychological factors (10.477%), pedagogical factors (7.716%), and self-adjustment factors (7.404%), with a cumulative contribution of 63.51%. On this basis, the total scores of factor analysis by K-means cluster analysis and four types of college students with different degrees of online course anxiety, normal (6.13%), mild anxiety (28.30%), moderate anxiety (45.75%), severe anxiety (19.81%). Conclusions： College students have mild to moderate anxiety in home-based online classes. Male, first-year, and non-medical students are more likely to have anxiety. Factor analysis and cluster analysis can summarize the main influencing factors of college students' online class anxiety, which can provide a practical reference for alleviating college students' online class anxiety and then taking measures.