ANALISIS STRES MASYARAKAT KERINCI DITINJAU DARI INTENSITAS AKSES INFORMASI PANDEMI COVID-19

INTRODUCTION The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is increased from day to day, caused the anxiety, the fear and the stress in the community. Furthermore, this is also gained with the overload of information accessed by the community, that make it difficult to identify the solutions that give impact to the panic and stress due to confusing information. The purpose of this study is to reveal the stress of the Kerinci community in terms of the access information intensity on the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD This study used a quantitative approach with the entire population of the Kerinci community who were willing to be research respondents who were taken by convenience sampling technique with total samples were 240 people. The data were revealed by using the Stress Level Scale which has been tested for the validity and reliability with the obtained of a Cronbach's Alpha score of 0.813, then the research data were analyzed by using the ideal score formula.RESULT The results of this study reveal that the average duration of people in accessing information about the COVID-19 pandemic is 5-6 hours per day and if it is viewed from the community's stress level in terms of physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms, it shows that people are experiencing stress symptoms. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The conclusion of this study reveals that the longer people who access the information about the COVID-19 pandemic, the higher risk of stress as seen from emotional, physical and behavioral symptoms will be experienced by the community. It is suggested for the community to be able to use information media wisely and filter the correct information about COVID-19. Moreover, for psychologists and counselors are hoped that they will provide services to the community to reduce stress experienced by the Kerinci community