JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

We welcome feedback from the authors Deng and Qin for their Comment on our paper “Quality Social Connection as an Active Ingredient in Digital Interventions for Young People With Depression and Anxiety: Systematic Scoping Review and Meta-analysis”. They suggest that two included studies (Radovic 2017a, 2017b) should not be included in our review as individual studies as data extraction and quality assessment of both studies is the same, and that this impacts the quality of the meta-analysis. We have the following response. Firstly, our review is scoping in nature, therefore we included and extracted any study that matched our inclusion criteria and appropriately extracted each study separately. Secondly, both studies have different designs, methodologies, and acquire different outcomes. For example, one study is a co-designed study, and the other is a qualitative study therefore, neither study is nor should be included in the meta-analysis itself. Thirdly, these studies are included and discussed in the review in relation to indicators of quality social connection within digital interventions and each study finding is different. In this case, different data is presented and referenced in relation to distinct digital intervention mechanisms that facilitate quality social connection and is appropriately presented separately. For example, the importance of anonymity is mentioned in one but not the other (Radovic et al. 2017b). Finally, we have already discussed the statistical and methodological variation within our scoping review as a potential limitation.