Quality of Life in the COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Exploring the Role of Individual and Group Variables
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Quality of Life in the COVID‑19 Pandemic in India: Exploring the Role of Individual and Group Variables Korsi Dorene Kharshiing1 · Drishti Kashyap1 · Kaveri Gupta1 · Masrat Khursheed1 · Mohammad Ghazi Shahnawaz1 · Neda Haseeb Khan1 · Ritika Uniyal1 · Usama Rehman2 Received: 20 June 2020 / Accepted: 12 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The role of individual variables (COVID-19 anxiety, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, optimistic bias and personal identity) as predictors of quality of life (QoL) during the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic is explored. Impact of group related variables (identification to family, religious group and nation) on QoL is also examined. Sample comprised 305 male and female Indian respondents, aged 18 to 78 years. Standardized measures have been utilised to assess the constructs. Results revealed that QoL was significantly influenced by individual variables (COVID-19 anxiety and personal identity) and group variables (identification with family and nation). The effect of COVID-19 anxiety and personal identity as individual variables is over and above that of demographic variables on QoL. Group variables (family and national identification) significantly impacted QoL over and above the individual variables. Findings would indeed, aid in the rehabilitation and assistance of people to live in COVID-19 crisis, and thereafter. Keywords COVID-19 pandemic · Quality of life · Individual variables · Group variables
Introduction Battling the novel coronavirus disease or COVID-19, many nations in the world have strained their human, health and economic resources. The speed in transmission of the virus has placed citizens and governments on tenterhooks, recognizing that this disease impacts not only the physical health of individuals, resulting in many fatalities the world over, but also their quality of life. Research on the viral outbreak has largely indicated negative outcomes such as depression and anxiety (Wang et al. 2020a), feelings of fear, stress and worry (Ahorsu et al. 2020; Bao et al. 2020), psychological distress (Rehman et al. 2020) and even stigma and xenophobia towards people suspected of being infected with the disease (Mamun and Griffiths 2020). Reportedly, fear of the disease has in many cases even led to suicides (Suicide leading cause for over 300 lockdown deaths in India, says The * Korsi Dorene Kharshiing [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110025, India
Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 120022, India
2
Economic Times (2020). Essentially, much of the evidence focus on adverse outcomes of the disease, necessitating an empirical shift towards COVID-19 outcomes that are preventive as well as positive, such as quality of life. There are some researches on preventive health behavior (Yıldırım et al. 2020; blinded for review, 2020) as well. It is a given, that the world has to live with the novel coronavirus, a
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