The Relationship between Social Connectedness and Perceived Stress during COVID-19 Lockdown in High School Students in Pathumwan District, Bangkok

: The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed hefty tolls upon humanity. Aside from tremendous fatalities and indelible damage inflicted upon the bodies of many recovered afflicted, lockdown and quarantine orders that it instigated have been shown by previous studies to have a psychological impact on humans. Ostensibly, gregarious animals like humans would lose the sense of belonging to society when occluded from the outside world, which is the case of lockdown and quarantine, and the loss thereof would precipitate negative mentalities. Measuring the former can be executed through the social connectedness scale, whereas one of the ways to gauge the latter is through the perceived stress scale. By conventional notion, perceived stress would have an inverted relationship with social connectedness, as suggested by previous studies. However, a long time has passed since they were conducted and sundry technologies have come to life ever since. People today, especially younger ones, are inclined to use these technologies for entertainment, and past research unveiled their efficacy in alleviating stress. This study was, therefore, commenced on the premise that low social connectedness during COVID-19 lockdown does not necessarily entail high stress among high school students in Thai schools in the Pathumwan district of Bangkok, who were of young ages and whose average household income exceeds that of many of their geographical counterparts. According to responses from the participants (n=374), there is no correlation between social connectedness and perceived stress, which supported the premise. While a conclusion can be drawn that technology use helps reduce the stress that would otherwise rise amidst the lockdown and would be responsible for the noncorrelation, more research is required to identify the clear cause of this astonishing outcome.


INTRODUCTION
Humans are a gregarious species; we rely on our conspecifics for our health and welfare (Snyder-Mackler et al., 2020).Indeed, according to Baumeister RF and Leary MR (1995), social connection is integral to human development and well-being.Conversely, dissociation from society can entail grave reverberations, both physically and psychologically (Bzdok & Dunbar, 2020; Holt-Lunstad, 2018).On the psychological side, physically distancing from other humans is shown to be intertwined with a feeling of distress for many individuals (Rajkumar, 2020).Accordingly, the social connectedness scale has been devised to gauge our sense of belonging to a social relationship or network purported to be a critical facet of our species, and unsurprisingly, various experiments have reported higher levels of social connectedness among those engaging in more social interactions (Margolis & Lyubomirsky, 2020).Unfortunately, since the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple lockdown and quarantine orders have been imposed to deter the spread of Coronavirus.The conventional notion is that, with scanty opportunity to socially interact with others, the mental state of many individuals, as could be determined by such measures such as the perceived stress scale (an instrument designed to appraise how much individuals deem the situations in which they are stressful), would be deteriorated.Strikingly, data from past research seem corroborative of that predicate.Cohen & Syme (1985) and Zaki & Williams (2013) suggested that social connectedness helps to bolster those with negative emotions, particularly in times of adversity and uncertainty, to which the present time precisely conforms.Lee, et al. (2002) also directly found that social connectedness is correlated with perceived stress amongst men and women alike.Nevertheless, those previous studies were done under circumstances that were much different to what we are

METHODOLOGY
In order to attain all requisite data for the research, a comprehensive questionnaire was devised to measure social connectedness and perceived stress.The social connectedness portion of the questionnaire was derived from the Social Connectedness Scale (SCS) invented by Lee & Robbins (1995), whereas the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) created by Cohen, et al. (1983) contributed to the perceived stress portion.The 2 original scales were subject to apropos modifications and each question would be answered on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree/never) to 5 (strongly agree/very frequently).Additional questions were included as a preliminary, inquiring about the respondent's age, school grade, and gender.Afterward, the questionnaire was sent to 4 experts to determine its Item Objective Congruence (IOC) and adjusted following their recommendation to reach the required minimum IOC score of 0.5.To enhance its credibility and reliability, a pilot test was conducted upon a small sample group, providing an output subsequently utilized for an internal reliability test with the Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) software.The test yielded a result of 0.896 on the Cronbach's alpha, surpassing the 0.7 thresholds necessary for acceptability stipulated by Cortina (1993).Proven reliability, the questionnaire was then arranged into an online form on the Google Forms platform and disseminated to a sample group of high school students studying at Thai schools in the Pathumwan district of Bangkok.Out of over 6,500 Thai school students in the district, 374 responses were collected, which were sufficient to represent the total population, according to Krejcie & Morgan (1970).The responses were then analyzed to determine the correlation between perceived stress and social connectedness.The SPSS software and Pearson correlation coefficient were selected as a means to complete the task.This table illustrates the statistical means of responses to most statements that were skewed towards "disagree" (these means were close to 2) and even those of the responses to the remaining were in the proximity of 3, which translated into "neutral".The overall mean of responses to all statements were 2.6838 with an overall standard deviation of 1.03117, which meant that the samples collectively "disagreed" with the statements.Since all statements in this section of the questionnaire were negative and agreeing with them would amount to reporting loss of social connectedness, it could be concluded that respondents collectively felt socially connected despite COVID-19 lockdown.This table demonstrates the statistical means of responses to all questions that were in the neighborhood of 3 or "sometimes".The overall mean was 3.079 with a standard deviation of 0.98297, indicating the moderate nature of the responses.Because the experiences or feelings outlined in all questions were negative and indicative of stress, answering "frequently" would be tantamount to reporting high perceived stress.Therefore, it can be concluded that the participants felt a temperate amount of stress during the lockdown.Per the result of this test, a Pearson correlation efficient of 0.052 was not statistically significant, meaning that social connectedness and perceived stress are not correlated, and that this result supports the initial hypothesis of the research.

DISCUSSION
The results indicated that social connectedness and perceived stress are not correlated during persistent COVID-19 lockdown, conflicting with findings from previous research conducted years ago.One plausible rationale for this unorthodox phenomenon is that the participants, precisely in an age range that is contemporary with the exponential expansion of the digital sphere, had entertained themselves with digital media in solitude, decreasing the necessity of social interactions in keeping afloat their mentality.For example, statistical data featured a surge in video game sales during the pandemic (Statista, 2021), and the past research found that video games could alleviate stress and boost mental health (Mandryk et al., 2020).Other media also experience an increase in use during the same time frame, such as social media (Wold, 2020), television, and online news (Oxford Business News, 2020).Studies in the past demonstrated a positive relationship between these media and stress reduction.Depp et al. (2010) found TV watching to be associated with less stress, an effect that attenuated with age, which implied that participants of our survey, who were especially young, could strongly be subject to this effect.Nabi & Krcmar (2004) also suggested that media consumption helps alleviate stress.This would explain how high school students would turn to the media amid COVID-19 quarantine for stress relief and amusement, which resulted in a rise in media use that supports our findings, a noncorrelation between social connectedness and perceived stress.

CONCLUSION
This research was initiated to determine the correlation between social connectedness and perceived stress during Covid-19 lockdown in High school students in Pathumwan district, Bangkok.As per the outcome, this basis was confirmed using the Pearson correlation coefficient; no statistically significant correlation was found.These data can potentially be beneficial in designing how activities in academic and professional fields will be conducted in the near future.Since a non-correlation was found, more virtual classes and work-from-home sessions could be planned for these students and their posterities.However, it must be noted that the finding of this research only strictly applies to the group of interest (high school students in Pathumwan district, Bangkok) or any group on par.Studying the same topic with those in other categories, who are more acclimatized to socializing and reliant upon it, may yield different results.In any case, more studies and meticulous scrutiny are required for such virtual activities that are planned to be implemented.

Table 1 :
Statistics of the respondents' demographics including gender, age and educational level (n = 374) ISSN:

589 3) Education Level
According to this table, the vast majority of respondents (n = 374) were female, who contributed 63.9% of the total responses.The samples were somewhat evenly split between the age of 16 to 18, each comprising over 20%, with a relatively slighter share of 15year-olds and a minuscule number of 19-year-olds.The plurality of respondents were at grade 10, while the rest were almost equally divided between 11 th graders and 12 th graders.

Table 2 :
Statistics of the answers to the social connectedness portion of the questionnaire.The portion consisted of 8 statements to which participants (n = 374) could respond by answering on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

In the last month, I feel disconnected from the world around me.
2) In the last month, even around people I know, I don't feel that I really belong.

Table 3 :
Statistics of the answers to the perceived stress portion of the questionnaire.The portion consisted of 9 statements to which participants (n = 374) could respond by answering on a scale of 1 (never) to 5 (very frequently).