COVID‐19 vaccination did not improve employee mental health: A prospective study in an early phase of vaccination in Japan

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Abstract

Objectives

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of vaccination to improve mental health among employees in Japan based on a prospective study.

Methods

The data were retrieved from the Employee Cohort Study conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Japan (E‐ COCO‐J) at T1 (4–10 February 2021) and T2 (22–29 June 2021). Psychological distress was measured by using an 18‐item scale of the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ). The analytic sample was limited to individuals employed at both T1 and T2 without missing covariates. Vaccination status was measured at T2. Statistical analysis was conducted to test the differential change in the psychological distress at T1 and T2 with the time × group interactions by using repeated ANOVA, adjusting for the covariates (gender, age, marital status, education, chronic disease, company size, industry, and occupation).

Results

Of the total sample (N = 948), 105 (11.1%) were vaccinated at least once at T2. The crude mean scores of psychological distress at T1 and T2 were 41.8 and 42.0 for vaccinated participants and 41.2 and 41.2 for nonvaccinated participants, respectively, with no significant effect of having been vaccinated (Cohen's d = 0.02, P  = 0.833). After adjusting the covariates, there was no significance ( P  = 0.446).

Conclusions

The COVID‐19 vaccination was supposed to have a limited effect on mental health among Japanese employees in an early phase of vaccination. To keep providing mental health care for employees is important even after starting the vaccination program.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.02.21262808: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    About SciScore

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