Challenges and opportunities in mixed method data collection on mental health issues of health care workers during COVID-19 pandemic in India

Abstract

Background: The present paper describes the key challenges and opportunities of mixed method telephonic data collection for mental health research using field notes and the experiences of the investigators in a multicenter study in ten sites of India. The study was conducted in public and private hospitals to understand the mental health status, social stigma and coping strategies of different healthcare personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.Methods: Qualitative and quantitative interviews were conducted telephonically. The experiences of data collection were noted as a field notes/diary by the data collectors and principal investigators.Results: The interviewers reported challenges such as network issues, lack of transfer of visual cues and sensitive content of data. Although the telephonic interviews present various challenges in mixed method data collection, it can be used as an alternative to face-to-face data collection using available technology.Conclusions: It is important that the investigators are well trained keeping these challenges in mind so that their capacity is built to deal with these challenges and good quality data is obtained.

Challenges faced by ethics committee members in India during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Smaller sample size and non-diligent responses, however, imposed major limitations on this study, which was conducted as a preliminary investigation. Similar difficulties have been reported by other researchers conducting online surveys among healthcare professionals 7 8 . Unavailability of contact details of EC members was a major hurdle against our efforts to maximize our reach to all the ECs functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.…”

Challenges to research implementation during public health emergencies: anecdote of insights and lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic in Gujarat, India

“…The COVID-19 pandemic is probably the biggest global health emergency in recent times. What started as a respiratory disease caused by a strain of the coronavirus family quickly spread into a global pandemic, infecting, and causing the death of millions of people (Filip et al, 2022;Kulkarni et al, 2022). In fact, its impact was so devastating that national systems such as health, nance, food, and transport systems were brought to (near) standstill(World Health Organization (WHO), 2020a; Xiang et al, 2021).…”