The compounding impact of the social determinants of health and COVID-19 on the mental health of young workers in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative, arts-based study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, a global health crisis, was acutely felt in the labour market for many young workers. Importantly, precarious employment, identified as an emergent social determinant of health, may negatively affect the mental health and well-being of young workers. To this end, we engaged with young workers to understand their workplace needs and challenges in the COVID-19 era and hear their recommendations for action. Semi-structured interviews and a graphic recording focus group were conducted with 33 young workers aged 18-26 years old in Manitoba, Canada, who had worked a minimum of 30 hours per week prior to COVID-19 onset and were living independent of their parents. Analysis involved delineating units of meaning from the data, clustering these to form thematic statements and extracting themes. Second-level analysis involved applying themes and sub-themes to a social determinants of health framework. The multifaceted, compounding realities of young workers' pre-COVID-19 employment situations were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, adversely impacting young worker's mental health. Unique findings from this study highlight the generational differences in this cohort, who are opposed to participating in fragmented systemic structures (neoliberalism) and inequitable employment conditions, and who yearn for social inclusion and work-life balance. Their recommendations for government and employers call for permanent and stable employment opportunities, economic and mental health supports, and space to be heard and valued, as they navigate the many life course challenges as emerging adults. Societies are dependent on young workers to develop and support the Canadian economy for future generations. Thus, it is a critical that recommendations proposed by young workers in this study be acted upon and implemented to provide an equitable, stable, and supportive future for young workers in Canada and beyond.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".