Conducting Population Health Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts and Recommendations

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many changes, including restrictions on indoor gatherings and visitation to residential aged care facilities, hospitals and certain communities. Coupled with potential restrictions imposed by health services and academic institutions, these changes may significantly impact the conduct of population health research. However, the continuance of population health research is beneficial for the provision of health services and sometimes imperative. This paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the conduct of population health research. This discussion unveils important ethical considerations, as well as potential impacts on recruitment methods, face-to-face data collection, data quality and validity. In addition, this paper explores potential recruitment and data collection methods that could replace face-to-face methods. The discussion is accompanied by reflections on the challenges experienced by the authors in their own research at an oral health service during the COVID-19 pandemic and alternative methods that were utilised in place of face-to-face methods. This paper concludes that, although COVID-19 presents challenges to the conduct of population health research, there is a range of alternative methods to face-to-face recruitment and data collection. These alternative methods should be considered in light of project aims to ensure data quality is not compromised.

Mental Well-Being and Job Satisfaction of Hospital Physicians during COVID-19: Relationships with Efficacy Beliefs, Organizational Support, and Organizational Non-Technical Skills

“…Because both exposure and outcome are assessed simultaneously, a true cause-and-effect relationship cannot be established. Moreover, although the sample was adequate for the implemented analyses, it should be noted that it is small and inhomogeneous due to the difficulties of recruiting healthcare workers in the pandemic era [ 102 ]. Consequently, this does not allow for comparisons by gender and resulted in a small effect size.…”

Feasibility of a One-Day Driving Workshop for Combat Veterans During COVID-19

“…The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all aspects of research, requiring researchers to adapt and be innovative in their approaches (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). Adaptations were not limited to only one aspect of a study, but more likely affected all aspects of the study, including research infrastructure, funding and staff, enrollment goals, recruitment strategies, data collection and interpretation (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). To overcome many of these barriers, researchers moved their studies from face-to-face to e-research (33,35,36).…”

“…Adaptations were not limited to only one aspect of a study, but more likely affected all aspects of the study, including research infrastructure, funding and staff, enrollment goals, recruitment strategies, data collection and interpretation (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). To overcome many of these barriers, researchers moved their studies from face-to-face to e-research (33,35,36). COVID-19 further transformed the research landscape by highlighting what aspects of data collection was essential versus aspirational (19).…”

“…Innovations to data collection include shipping study materials to participants, online assessments, and video conferencing (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). Typical convenience recruitment methods, such as placing recruitment materials in clinical and public settings, had to shift to remote recruitment efforts (i.e., mail, email, social media, paid advertisements, online town halls or community events) (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36).…”

“…Innovations to data collection include shipping study materials to participants, online assessments, and video conferencing (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). Typical convenience recruitment methods, such as placing recruitment materials in clinical and public settings, had to shift to remote recruitment efforts (i.e., mail, email, social media, paid advertisements, online town halls or community events) (18,19,(33)(34)(35)(36). Finally, the pandemic disempowered rural and marginalized populations to experience more health inequities and who had limited access to the required technological tools to participate in e-research (19,36).…”