Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Sep 5, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 4, 2020 - Oct 30, 2020
Date Accepted: Oct 20, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 10, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Care Workers’ Anxiety: Protocol for a Meta-Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been declared a public health emergency of international concern, which causes excessive anxiety in health care workers. In addition, publication bias and the low quality of publications are widespread, which can cause unreliable results.
Objective:
The first aim of this meta-analysis is to examine the prevalence of anxiety among health care workers and determine whether it had increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, our second aim is to investigate whether there has been an increase in publication bias and a deterioration in the quality of publications due to the pandemic.
Methods:
All related studies that were published/released from 2015 to 2020 will be searched in electronic databases. The risk of bias in individual studies will be assessed using the STROBE checklist. The heterogeneity of the studies will be assessed using the I2 statistic. The effect size (prevalence rates of anxiety) and a 95% confidence interval for each research will also be calculated. We shall use moderator analysis to test for the effect of COVID-19 on health care workers’ anxiety, and detect publication bias in COVID-19 studies. We shall also assess publication bias using the funnel plot and Egger’s regression. In the presence of publication bias, if studies have no homogeneity, the trim-and-fill procedure will be applied to adjust the missing studies.
Results:
We are required to complete this meta-analysis within two months, if our submission is accepted.
Conclusions:
This study presents a protocol for meta-analysis targets to provide comprehensive evidence about whether COVID-19 pandemic increases the prevalence of anxiety among health care workers and whether there has been an increase in publication bias and a deterioration in the quality of publications due to the pandemic. The result of this review can provide evidence to help health managers to make informed decisions for preventing anxiety of health care workers.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.