Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Mar 30, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 30, 2021 - Apr 13, 2021
Date Accepted: May 29, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jun 3, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
“Life is unrecognisable”: Sentiment analysis of COVID-19 impacts on a sample of Australian adults.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Natural language processing is a machine learning technique that uses intelligent computer algorithms to detect patterns and themes in unstructured datasets commonly containing text data. Machine learning can aid with understanding the impacts of novel and disruptive events, and therefore offers myriad public health applications.
Objective:
This study aims to explore community sentiment towards COVID-19 and the nature of the impacts that COVID-19 has had on people using natural language processing on a linked research dataset.
Methods:
Stanford CoreNLP was used to analyse and detect sentiment in qualitative COVID-19 impact stories from 3,483 Australian adults. Common themes were categorised according to the Theoretical Life Domains framework and a multinomial regression analysis was conducted to identify psychological and demographic predictors of sentiment.
Results:
About one-third of participants (33%) expressed negative sentiment towards COVID-19, while a further 44% expressed neutral sentiment and 23% expressed positive sentiment. Of the Theoretical Life Domains, behavioural regulation was by far the most commonly impacted life domain, followed by environmental context and resources, emotion, and social influences. Negative sentiment was predicted by financial stress and lower subjective wellbeing.
Conclusions:
COVID-19 and its containment measures have had dramatic impacts on Australian adults. Ability to regulate health and social behaviours were among the most common impacts and this raises concerns for the effects of public health crises on chronic health and mental health conditions. Positive effects of COVID-19, related to greater flexibility in working arrangements and reductions in life ‘busyness’ were also documented. Clinical Trial: N/A
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Copyright
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