Summary
Our group decided to analyze the psychological impact COVID-19 had on us students. More specifically at an academic institution where some of the brightest students, who are generally motivated, from all over the world come to in UCLA. With access to UCLA surveys given by various professors to their students' pre and post pandemic, we were given the opportunity to explore the impact this pandemic has had on students’ mental health.
The approach we took in order to analyze this was to attempt leveraging sentiment analysis, text mining skills and use some textual visualization techniques to explore the general feelings and thoughts expressed by the UCLA students prior to the pandemic as well as after the pandemic. By comparing students’ responses to similar questions taken from pre pandemic and post pandemic surveys, we were able to identify a few important questions to explore. Our study aims to gage students’ general feelings about life after this pandemic and to investigate if they are worse than prior to the pandemic, while also see if STEM majors, international students, and those with altered living arrangements express more negativity due to the pandemic. In addition, we also investigated student interaction between their peers and instructors.
The approach we took in order to analyze this was to attempt leveraging sentiment analysis, text mining skills and use some textual visualization techniques to explore the general feelings and thoughts expressed by the UCLA students prior to the pandemic as well as after the pandemic. By comparing students’ responses to similar questions taken from pre pandemic and post pandemic surveys, we were able to identify a few important questions to explore. Our study aims to gage students’ general feelings about life after this pandemic and to investigate if they are worse than prior to the pandemic, while also see if STEM majors, international students, and those with altered living arrangements express more negativity due to the pandemic. In addition, we also investigated student interaction between their peers and instructors.
