Psychological and Social Effects Resulting from the Spread of Rumor in the Time of the Corona Pandemic and its Relationship to Psychological Security Among a Sample of Housewives in Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate

Abstract

The study aimed to identify the psychological and social effects resulting from the spread of rumor in the time of Corona and its relationship to psychological security, and to investigate the differences in the averages of each of these variables according to the variables of the demographic study: Psychological and social effects scale and psychological security scale on an accessible sample, which included (451) housewives in Ramallah governorate in the academic year 2020/2021. The results showed that the arithmetic mean of the study sample’s estimates on the scale of psychological and social effects as a whole was (4.09) and a percentage of (81.8), so that psychological effects ranked first, while social effects ranked second, while the arithmetic mean of the study sample’s estimates on the psychological security scale as a whole was (2.94) with a percentage (58.8) and an average rating. The results also showed that there is no statistically significant difference between the total score and the sub-domains of the scale of the psychological and social effects depending on the variables of the educational level, and the place of residence except for the field of psychological effects. While there were statistically significant differences in the total degree and sub-domains of the scale of the psychological and social effects due to the variables of social status and came in favor of the divorced woman, and the variable of residence, and it was in favor of the city, while the media most used came in favor of television. The study showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the total degree of the psychological security scale and the domains of (family security, health security) due to the educational level variable, and there were statistically significant differences in the field of self-security and social security according to the educational level variable and the differences came in favor of the bachelor, in addition to the presence of significant differences in the variable of family, social, and self-security in relation to the marital status variable, it came in favor of a married woman, and with regard to the place of residence, it came in favor of a camp, and finally, with regard to the variable of the media most used, it came in favor of Facebook and WhatsApp. The results also indicated the existence of a statistically significant inverse correlation between the psychological and social effects resulting from the spread of rumor in the time of the Corona pandemic and the psychological security of housewives in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate, and that there is a predictive ability for the social effects of rumor at the level of psychological safety, as the effects The social aspect has clarified (30.0%) of the percentage of variation in the level of psychological safety.