JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide from the beginning of 2020. On February 27th, the first patient with coronavirus was diagnosed in Israel. On March 14th, the Israeli government declared a general lockdown, which altered the lives of the population.

Objective:

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the change in well-being, physical activity and sleep quality of B.Ed. students at two time points: before and during the COVID-19 lockdown. It was predicted that there would be a decrease in the afore mentioned parameters. Contrary to all expectations, an increase was observed in all three.

Methods:

Five-hundred thirty-three (533) B.Ed. students submitted an online questionnaire before the lockdown and at its end. The questionnaire comprised four parts: a sociodemographic and exercise questionnaire taken from the HBSC health questionnaire, sleep quality, rated using the Mini Sleep Questionnaire (MSQ), and well-being, rated using the short version of the mental health inventory (MHI). This is a pre-post cohort questionnaire study.

Results:

Results show that during the lockdown, there was an increase in the level of exercise students engaged in: 61.4% engaged in a greater amount of physical activity compared to 40.9% that engaged in a greater amount before COVID-19. Levels of sleep quality and well-being were also higher during the COVID-19 lockdown (5.34 ± 0.92 vs. 5.12 ± 0.46 p =.015) and well-being (3.79 ± 0.62 vs. 3.67 ± 0.59 p =.022).

Conclusions:

These findings indicate that there is a population that might take advantage of the change in lifestyle due to the lockdown, directing the free time towards improving health by engaging in more physical activity thus improving sleep quality and well-being.