COVID-19 and College Students; how the pandemic has impacted collegiate communities and mental health

School connectedness is a student's belief that adults in their school prioritize their learning and care about them individually. Previous research has indicated that high levels of school connectedness may predict positive mental health in adolescents. School connectedness has been shown to be associated with lower levels of psychological problems and suicidal thoughts (Hall-Lande, et al., 2007). During the COVID-19 pandemic, school environments were transitioned to be online which could impact feelings of school connectedness. It is possible that different levels of sociability in students could relate to how well they coped with the changes of school environments and stressors of the pandemic. In the current research, I examined the relationships among gender, sociability, school connectedness, and mental health among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample included 108 college students with 80 females and 28 males. The sample included 16 freshman, 37 sophomores, 19 juniors and 36 seniors. Participants completed a questionnaire measuring their sociability, school connectedness during in-person and online classes and mental health during the Spring of 2020 and the Winter of 2021. As expected, results revealed that females had significantly higher mental health concerns and significantly higher school connectedness ratings, in both in-person and online classes, in comparison tomales. As hypothesized, students who felt greater school connectedness during in-person classes had higher levels of mental health concerns in the Spring of 2020. As expected, results suggested that students who have high sociability ratings did not typically report higher in-person school connectedness scores than students with lower sociability ratings. This research supports the notion of gender differences in mental health and school connectedness and that students with high sociability levels may need in-person interaction in order to feel connected to peers and faculty.