The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families in Germany

  1. Susanne Brandstetter
  2. Tanja Poulain
  3. Mandy Vogel
  4. Christof Meigen
  5. Michael Melter
  6. Birgit Seelbach-Göbel
  7. Christian Apfelbacher
  8. Wieland Kiess
  9. Michael Kabesch
  10. Antje Körner
  11. the KUNO Kids study group

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Abstract

Objective

To assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families with young children in two population-based childhood cohorts with a low and moderate COVID-19 prevalence, respectively.

Methods

A cross-sectional study using online questionnaires in families from LIFE Child (n=306, Leipzig) and KUNO Kids (n=612, Regensburg) was performed at the end of the German lock-down period. Outcomes were parent-reported impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family life, concerns and trust in political measures.

Results

Most families were concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-down measures, with major concerns directed towards the economic situation (>70%), the health of close-ones (37%), but less towards their own health (<10%). Many concerns, seeking information and approval of federal measures were more pronounced in the more affected region. Approval of lockdown measures and concerns about economic recession were related to regional differences and not significantly dependent on educational status or being personally affected by the disease.

Conclusion

Regional differences in approval of lockdown measures were observed and thus, measures to specifically support families according to the regional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are needed.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.05.20206805: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All parents provide written informed consent before participation.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A limitation of our study is its cross-sectional design. A longitudinal perspective is ideal to provide a better understanding of how the situation of families’ develops over time and whether concerns vary according to current restriction measures and number of COVID-19 cases. This longitudinal approach was provided in an analysis from Croatia, where surveys were performed in almost 1000 individuals on the day after the first patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 in the country and 3 weeks later.12 There, concerns and worries increased over the three weeks period as did the acceptance for the measures with increasing severity of the pandemic. Those who were at highest risk but also mothers represented the most concerned group12, consistent with earlier pandemics such as the swine flu.13 Therefore, parents, especially mothers, were the group we addressed in our study. While we did not investigate concerns longitudinally, Leipzig would rather compare to an early stage of the pandemic and Regensburg represents a situation where the pandemic has already increased its punch. Even though measures were almost identical in our two study locations, the course of the pandemic was different with much less and less severely affected individuals in Leipzig. Therefore, our study very nicely confirms and complements the findings from Croatia: Those results underline, when pandemic effects are at a low level, concerns may be less prominent and trust in the necessity of protective measures may ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT02550236RecruitingLIFE Leipzig Research Centre for Civilization Diseases

    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.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.05.20206805v1 on medRxiv