Family income does not necessarily lead to a holistic e-learning experience during COVID-19: a study in Sri Lanka

Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak caused a disruption of the conventional education system worldwide. This resulted in a shift towards online mode of delivery. This study analyzed the pandemic’s effect on the education of students from diverse socioeconomic groups in Sri Lanka. The required data for this study was collected through a nation-wide field survey, covering 3020 households. The factor analysis (FA) performed identified seven significant factors. Thereafter, K-means and spectral clustering were used to cluster the population in order to identify the socioeconomic groups that were impacted in a similar manner. This resulted in the identification of three clusters whose demographics and relationship to the extracted factors were extensively analyzed and interpreted. The study concluded that students in high-income households were more emotionally affected, whereas students in low-income households were mostly affected by a lack of resources. The study also concluded that students from mid-income households were the least affected emotionally.