Clustering Analysis of Psychosocial Factors: A Pandemic Perspective

Abstract

The present study aims to identify various factors that affect the psycho-socio characteristics and to determine the extent to which the sociodemographic and psychosocial behaviour influence the individual, classified based on their behaviour during COVID-19. An online survey based on the Questionnaire was conducted in tier II and tier III cities of Madhya Pradesh. The hierarchical cluster technique based on Ward’s method was used to identify the optimum number of clusters and the Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the groups. Binary logistic regression was used to distinguish the groups' key socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics. The result of the present study reveals that an increasing sense of coherence and self-esteem was associated with an increase in the likelihood of respondents being classified in the cluster of balanced psychosocial behaviour.