Strengthening Religiosity during COVID-19: The Key to Human Well-being

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic affects various aspects of human life including physical and mental health. The current scenario shows that it has a significant impact on human well-being, therefore an empirical study is essential to comprehend the scenario and further prevent the multiplying impacts that would arise pertaining to the well-being of the people.This study explores how people maintain positive attitudes by performing religious practices throughout theCOVID-19 Movement Control Order (MCO). It also identifies religious practices before and amid the pandemic, and whether income influences the motivation to perform religious activity during MCO. The cross-sectional study was conducted via Google Forms during the Movement Control Order (MCO) in March 2020 which involves 195 respondents from various states in Malaysia. The study was conducted using an instrument specifically developed in focussing on human practices in daily life. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS 23.0).The findings demonstrated that religious practices had a significant mean score between before and during the pandemic [df=195, t=-13.92, p<0.05]. The findings also showed that religious practices had increased significantly amid the COVID-19 MCO [6.19±0.97] as compared to before the COVID-19 MCO [5.48±1.04]. It also reveals that people who have a higher income could do better religious practices in daily life as compared to those who possesseda lower income. The COVID-19 pandemic MCO inspires the Malaysian Muslims to heap on their religious practices even more in daily life, and this motivates them to have a good well-being even though they face with a hard situation.