A CROSS-REGIONAL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON SOCIAL LIFE OF GENERAL RESIDENTS IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF WEST BENGAL

Abstract

The pandemic COVID-19 has a catastrophic impact on people’s social activities across the globe, and it’s necessary to pay profound attention to this. This study focuses on a detailed comparison of the social activities and difficulties faced by the general population during COVID-19 in between urban and rural areas of the Southern part of West Bengal, India. The data were obtained through the online Google Form, using snowball sampling technique from 20.05.2020 to 08.06.2020. The respondents of ≥18-year age was considered for this study. Total 472 respondents of 69 villages and 47 town areas have taken their perception through a said questionnaire, among them 43.88% and 56.12% respondents were residing in the rural and urban region respectively. Two modified five-point Likert-type scales were adopted: Social Activity Scale (SAS-15: Cronbach’s alpha of .875 for urban and .720 for the rural region) and Social Difficulty Scale (SDS-18 Cronbach’s alpha of .884 for urban and .914 for the rural region). It was used to study the respondent’s attitude towards social activities and difficulties in rural and urban regions based on five demographic aspects. Non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was also performed to know the relation between demographic aspects and social activities. This study reveals that the rural respondents were engaging themselves in more social activities (Mean of SAS score 57.49 and 54.78 respectively) and facing more difficulties (Mean of SDS score 42.59 and 38.03 respectively) compared to urban respondents. Overall, mild disagreement and little difficulty have been observed in social activities and difficulties, respectively.