How sex impacted associations between psychological distress and worry on adults’ health behaviours during SARS-CoV-2
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been associated with poorer mental well-being (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms and infection worry) and unfavorable changes in health behaviours (e.g., physical activity, healthy eating, and alcohol intake). Notably, trends in changes appear to differ between adult males and females (>18 years). To investigate these sex-based differences, we explored the impact of sex as a moderator on changes in health behaviours attributed to changes in mental well-being during SARS-CoV-2. Data from Canada, Columbia and Ireland collected through the International COVID-19 Awareness and Responses Evaluation (iCARE) Study was used. Participants (n = 17,880; 52.3% female) self-reported changes in their mental well-being and health behaviours attributed to SARS-CoV-2. Associations were explored using multi-variable logistic regression models stratified by country. Significance was determined by p < .01. In Canada and Ireland, increased psychological distress was significantly associated with ≥50% increase in the odds of an unfavourable change in healthy eating, physical activity and alcohol intake (minimum odds ratios (ORs)=1.50). In Columbia, increased psychological distress was significantly associated with unfavourable changes in only alcohol intake (OR=1.63). Increased infection worry was associated with unfavourable changes in physical activity (OR=1.21) in Columbia. Sex was found to significantly moderator associations in Columbia; Females experienced more unfavourable changes in their odds of healthy eating compared to males with increased psychological distress (p < .01). Given the lack of consistent sex-based trends across countries, geographic and cultural context are likely more salient to tailored future behavioural interventions intended to support adults' practice of health-protective behaviours during a pandemic than biological sex (e.g., public health campaign promoting culturally relevant physical activity in response to greater perceived psychological distress).
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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 | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".