The UK Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and diet, physical activity, and sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from eight longitudinal population surveys
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Abstract
Background
In March 2020, the UK implemented the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough) to minimise job losses. Our aim was to investigate associations between furlough and diet, physical activity, and sleep during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
We analysed data on 25,092 participants aged 16–66 years from eight UK longitudinal studies. Changes in employment, including being furloughed, were based on employment status before and during the first lockdown. Health behaviours included fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and sleep. Study-specific estimates obtained using modified Poisson regression, adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics and pre-pandemic health and health behaviours, were statistically pooled using random effects meta-analysis. Associations were also stratified by sex, age, and education.
Results
Across studies, between 8 and 25% of participants were furloughed. Compared to those who remained working, furloughed workers were slightly less likely to be physically inactive ( RR = 0.85; [95% CI 0.75–0.97]; I 2 = 59%) and did not differ overall with respect to low fruit and vegetable consumption or atypical sleep, although findings for sleep were heterogenous ( I 2 = 85%). In stratified analyses, furlough was associated with lower fruit and vegetable consumption among males ( RR = 1.11; [1.01–1.22]; I 2 = 0%) but not females ( RR = 0.84; [0.68–1.04]; I 2 = 65%). Considering changes in quantity, furloughed workers were more likely than those who remained working to report increases in fruit and vegetable consumption, exercise, and hours of sleep.
Conclusions
Those furloughed exhibited similar health behaviours to those who remained in employment during the initial stages of the pandemic. There was little evidence to suggest that adoption of such social protection policies in the post-pandemic recovery period and during future economic crises had adverse effects on population health behaviours.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.08.21258531: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not 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:While research combining results from several UK prospective studies makes a clear contribution to understanding the impact of the furlough scheme, there are limitations that should be taken into account while interpreting our findings. Firstly, we were not …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.08.21258531: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not 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:While research combining results from several UK prospective studies makes a clear contribution to understanding the impact of the furlough scheme, there are limitations that should be taken into account while interpreting our findings. Firstly, we were not able to achieve full harmonisation of measures across studies. By focusing on comparable measures we also limited our scope to explore other aspects of diet, physical activity or sleep (such as frequency of snacking, specific kinds of physical activity, or sleep quality). Furthermore, outcomes were only analysed during the initial stages of the pandemic (April-July 2020) and relationships may change with subsequent changes to restrictions and growing economic uncertainty. Further research is needed to examine this as well as heterogeneity in the stable employed and furloughed groups in greater detail. Despite being embedded in long standing studies, surveys during the pandemic were selective. While we corrected for this using weights derived for each study, bias due to selective non-response cannot be excluded (25). Similarly, bias due to unmeasured confounding cannot be ruled out and could be influential considering the small magnitude of the risk ratios observed. For example, there may be unobserved differences between participants whose jobs were retained, versus those who experienced furlough or job loss. Our fully adjusted models account for differences in some key pre-pandemic characteristics among employment groups....
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.
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