Exploring Post COVID-19 Outbreak Intradaily Mobility Pattern Change in College Students: A GPS-Focused Smartphone Sensing Study

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, most colleges and universities move to restrict campus activities, reduce indoor gatherings and move instruction online. These changes required that students adapt and alter their daily routines accordingly. To investigate patterns associated with...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Congyu Wu, Hagen Fritz, Melissa Miller, Cameron Craddock, Kerry Kinney, Darla Castelli, David Schnyer
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
GPS
R
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/356cd7869acf47eca477897a710228a4
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, most colleges and universities move to restrict campus activities, reduce indoor gatherings and move instruction online. These changes required that students adapt and alter their daily routines accordingly. To investigate patterns associated with these behavioral changes, we collected smartphone sensing data using the Beiwe platform from two groups of undergraduate students at a major North American university, one from January to March of 2020 (74 participants), the other from May to August (52 participants), to observe the differences in students' daily life patterns before and after the start of the pandemic. In this paper, we focus on the mobility patterns evidenced by GPS signal tracking from the students' smartphones and report findings using several analytical methods including principal component analysis, circadian rhythm analysis, and predictive modeling of perceived sadness levels using mobility-based digital metrics. Our findings suggest that compared to the pre-COVID group, students in the mid-COVID group generally 1) registered a greater amount of midday movement than movement in the morning (8–10 a.m.) and in the evening (7–9 p.m.), as opposed to the other way around; 2) exhibited significantly less intradaily variability in their daily movement; 3) visited less places and stayed at home more everyday, and; 4) had a significant lower correlation between their mobility patterns and negative mood.