Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

The NeurolabNL postdoctoral researchers Willeke Kitselaar, Chris Hoeboer, Ewa Ewa Miedzobrodzka and Julia Henrich are working hard to shed light on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social safety, education and mental health. Here is an update on their progress:

Social Safety

The review on social safety will focus on crime rates and patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic including the impact on victims and perpetrators and risk factors for offending such as low socioeconomic status. In addition, we will assess how mental health in prisons and during re-entry in society was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We will also assess what policy or what interventions are used to minimize the impact of COVID-19 and whether these seem to be effective. I am currently screening the papers identified with the search (~2000).

Detailed information about the project can be found in the PROSPERO registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021288748

Education

The review on education will focus on motivation and self-regulation related to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we’ll take into account academic achievements and wellbeing. The review will also include a meta-analysis on the relationship between motivation to online learning and academic achievements, which will be a part of a Bachelor thesis written by Asude Tekinerdogan, assisting in the project. The review and meta-analysis will also involve individual differences in gender, age and country as possible moderators.
The final literature search resulted in over 6000 papers, which were pre-screened in Rayyan and are currently screened in ASReview.

Detailed information about the project can be found in the PROSPERO registration:
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=293259

Mental Health

The review on mental health will focus on the mental health consequences of the regulations and life changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition the review will explore if factors such as gender, socioeconomic status,  or age moderate the impact of the pandemic (regulations and life changes) on mental health. Using the AI assisted program ASReview, we completed title and abstract screening of 12553 publications that were identified in our search. A total of 440 publications were selected for full text screening. Full texts of the selected studies are currently assessed for eligibility.
The review has been pre-registered at:
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42022302247