Psychological Distress Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Adults in the United Kingdom Based on Coordinated Analyses of 11 Longitudinal Studies

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Abstract

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.22.21265368: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableCovariates: The following covariates were adjusted for and/or used to stratify estimates: sex (male; female); age (coded in 10-year bands to account for non-linear relationships: 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75+); ethnicity (self-reported and coded for main analyses; as White-including white ethnic minorities vs.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Cell Line AuthenticationAuthentication: Mental Health: Mental health was measured both before the pandemic (a range of 0-7 years prior) and at multiple time-points across the pandemic using validated continuous scales measuring symptoms of common mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety (Table 1 outlines the specific measures used for each cohort).

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All meta-analyses and meta-regressions were conducted using Stata 17 (StataCorp LP).
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Despite these advantages, methodological limitations should be noted. We cannot definitively attribute changes in population mental health to the COVID-19 pandemic or related policy responses. However, we note that we are unaware of alternate events which would have been likely to substantially confound our analyses or their interpretation. There were differences in the timing of data collection (including when pre-pandemic measures were collected) and the mental health survey instruments used, though this did not appear to significantly contribute to the high levels of statistical heterogeneity observed. Similarly, although weighting was used where possible to control for non-random response, conditioning on voluntary response may induce selection bias, as it is very plausible that the mental health of the observed differ systematically from the target population. However, the broad consistency in the direction of findings across datasets provides reassurance that the key conclusions are likely to be robust to these differences, even if the magnitude of the effect size is harder to confirm. In conclusion, mental health has been persistently worse than before the pandemic, particularly among women, those with higher degrees, and 25–44-year-olds. The sustained deterioration, even during easing of lockdown measures, somewhat refutes the notion that easing lockdown measures necessarily leads to better mental health, and implies that there are myriad pathways leading to adverse m...

    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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