The well-being of children in a full lockdown and partial lockdown situation: a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT

From 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world as we knew it. In the interest of stopping the spread of the pandemic, lockdown periods and social distancing measures were established in many countries at the beginning of that year and these restrictions continued for the following months and years. Moreover, schools from all over the world closed their doors. In this context, the objective of this research was to compare the well-being of children in Spain during full lockdown and partial lockdown periods, as measured by physical, emotional, social, and academic indicators. The 'Well-being of Children in Lockdown' (WCL) scale (Berasategi et al. 2020) was used to measure the well-being of children using these parameters. The results revealed statistically significant differences in the general well-being of children and also in terms of emotions, addictions and playful and creative activities, with greater levels of well-being in these domains being evident in the full lockdown period compared with the partial lockdown period. In contrast, during the partial lockdown period, levels of physical and academic well-being were higher in comparison with those reported during the full lockdown phase. Finally, some theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.