Analysis of Emotions during Confinement: A Qualitative Study among Social Work Students

The COVID-19 pandemic aggressively disrupted the lives of undergraduate social work students. To better understand the emotions that affected these students during confinement, a qualitative study was conducted in which they were asked online how they had felt. Through texts of up to 200 words, 892 students from 14 Spanish-speaking countries (mainly Spain and Mexico) expressed their accounts of feelings experienced. The analysis combined deductive and inductive strategies, and the results depict emotional ambivalence, with negative emotions being shown more in men, in small cities, in intermediate courses and in Spain, while positive emotions occur more in female students, in rural environments, in final courses and in Mexico. The results allow us to characterize emotions during confinement, identify the cause of emotions in isolation, and express consequences such as loneliness or fear of the future in a context of crisis and social vulnerability but with resilient and supportive coping strategies.