Issues in COVID-19 research and statistical analyses (Part XVVIX)
April 27, 2022
In a very interesting recent article that appeared in the Harvard Gazette on April 21, attention is brought to the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on childrens’ mental health. The article appears to be focused on surveys done in 1999, 2004, and 2017 conducted in England. Their general findings were that physical health of children and adults up to 24 years of age gradually improved over this period but yet they found a decline in mental health amongst those surveyed. They even discuss some “statistically significant” findings of small increases in emotional disorders, especially depression and anxiety, all before the pandemic. They also go into mentioning that in general a lack of studies on children was complicated by problems of conducting large-scale research during the COVID-19 pandemic. Child psychiatric epidemiologist Tamsin Ford even said, ““All our statistical assumptions are based on having a probability sample.” This is very insightful of the researchers to acknowledge the limitations of generalizability from a chosen sample of respondents, which was hard to