A Sentiment Analysis Study on Gender and Racial Inequities in College Students’ Perceptions of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated health inequities among emerging adult college students, and their experiences navigating intersectional systems of marginalization and institutional environments may have shaped their emotional wellbeing. We applied sentiment analysis of students’ reflections during the first 18 months of the pandemic to categorize and quantify the most common emotions, including by gender, race/ethnicity, and the type of institution they attended. Our sample included 235 emerging adult college students (ages 18-22 at baseline) from colleges and universities across the USA who completed four waves (W1-W4) of online surveys from April 2020 to July 2021. The most frequent emotions expressed were sadness (20%) and fear (20%). Across waves, women expressed statistically significantly more negative sentiments related to their COVID-19 pandemic experiences than men. Disparities in expressed emotion may contribute to broader mental health inequities. Sentiment analysis has several limitations but can be an informative tool for understanding emerging adult wellbeing.