“Fun Paper 3”

1. Introduction.

CCNY students experienced changes and effects in every aspect of their life due to the COVID epidemic and lockdown in New York City. In terms of infection, more than an eighth of students had known someone close to them who had died from COVID, and even more—about one-fifth of students—had experienced symptoms themselves. However, because testing for the virus was difficult to accomplish at the beginning of the pandemic, many people weren’t able to get a precise result as to whether or not they had gotten COVID-19. In terms of students’ home and work life, there were a variety of both negative and positive impacts. Major negative effects include a huge decrease in mental health and work efficiency, or an increase in work danger from having to continue working in close contact with people, as well as an increase in familial responsibilities and workload. On the other hand, people also experienced a positive change in their mindsets from having to be isolated for so long. This includes paying more attention to their health, spending more time with loved ones (either in person or virtually), and acknowledging small things that they hadn’t before. While some aspects of the virus affected both men and women equally, there was a much larger negative effect on women for their mental health functioning than on men. In almost every category on the EPII women had a higher percentage than men. This applies to the positive impacts as well; women were more likely to experience a higher rate of positive effects from the lockdown than men. In this study, the different impacts of the virus and lockdown on transgender people will be explored. If the trend so far is that minorities (women and POC) have had a larger range of negative and positive impacts, then that on trans people should be similar.

2. Method.

The participants of this study will be residents of New York City and should be an even mixture of trans and cisgender people, with race and ethnicity are taken into account. The target population is those who provide and prepare disaster resources and assistance for businesses, schools, and healthcare. Participants will be selected randomly from ages 18-45, half being trans and the other being cis. The target population should not be selected to prevent possible bias. In order to address Dr. Nishanthi’s concerns about assessing the baseline effects of COVID on stress, the participants will be asked to rate their stress levels throughout lockdown. There will be a total of four groups of at least seventy-five participants each, except for the fourth, which will be at least one hundred. One group will be made up of only transgender people, another of cisgender men, the third of cisgender women, and the last of completely random citizens. This will allow the data to be organized by gender without one influencing the other, as well as establish a control. Both the experimental and half the control group will be given stress management intervention, specifically meditation, mindfulness, and exercise training to see if the effectiveness of these techniques differs. If there are any spontaneous changes in stress, the participant will be evaluated further to see if it was caused by an outside life event. The average of the fourth group will serve as the controlled data, which can be referenced by the results of the other groups in terms of differences in gender, infection history, and depression. Two other variables that would need to be controlled in this study are the participants’ status in life as a student, worker, or non-worker, and whether or not the participant lives alone or pays rent. In order to control these, this information will also be collected from each participant and compared with the control group. The dependent variable in this study is the range of negative and positive impacts on people and their stress due to COVID. For participants who are students, their academic performance before and after stress management will be recorded to take into account its effects. The independent variables are the differences in gender between the groups, their life status, and their race. The control variables are the set of questions the participants will be asked, the stress management intervention techniques, the number of participants in the experimental groups, and the place where the participants live.

3. Results  

To perform a statistical test on this experiment, you need the calculation of the null hypothesis, then the comparison of the means and standard deviation in the experimental groups and the control to evaluate the p-value. In order to calculate the difference between the experimental and control groups, you calculate them separately then compare. To calculate the variation within the experimental and control groups, you square the deviations and add them together. Statistical significance is what determines whether the results of the experiment were due to chance or not. A p-value less than 0.5 is considered statistically significant.

4. Conclusions  

Dr. Nishanthi concluded that all students at City College had reduced stress after stress management training, and that would be correct. According to the chart, both males and females in the experimental group showed improvement. For the control group, however, stress seemed to increase over time. This is most likely due to the fact that this was the part of the control group that did not receive stress management training. Stress management training may have varying effects on opposing genders because men and women handle stress differently due to gender norms and biological factors, so some stress management techniques may work well with women but not for men and vice-versa. Some possible improvements that could be made for Dr. Nishanthi’s study are to include transgender people, as well as to try different techniques for different genders to see which work best.