The COVID-19 Pandemic and Sustainable Life of Korean Adolescents: Exploring Gender Differences
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper on a very important subject. It is well-written and the clear. The empirical analysis is appropriate given the available data. The dependent variables studied are well-defined and interesting. While only a few individual characteristics are controlled for, the ones included are clearly important. The focus on gender differences is good. The results, while counterintuitive, are therefore believable. I only have a couple of minor suggestions for improvement.
First, on the second page, the authors refer to "Ontario, USA." I presume they mean Ontario, Canada.
Second, in the discussion of the results it would be helpful to compare them with the results found in previous research, and to provide some possible explanations when they are different.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper explores the changes in physical activity, sitting time, risky behaviours, sleep, sadness and suicidal ideation report in the representative sample of Korean adolescents in the pre-pandemic and pandemic year. The study used secondary data from an anonymous, self-reported online survey "Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey (KYRBS)" conducted by the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in South Korea. The study focuses on the impact of the pandemic with regard to gender, socio economic status and age differences on various areas of adolescents’ lives by examining responses of the adolescents in two time periods. The authors present finding both positive and negative effects on different areas of young people’s lives.
The authors address and respond to the emerging need for such explorative studies as the world has been faced with the pandemic whose effects have been and will be uniquely and universally impacting all aspects of adolescent lives, and therefore propose to initialise policies and practices that can improve the sustainability of adolescents’ healthy lives during and after the pandemic.
In the introduction and throughout the paper, the authors note that it is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic had only negative consequences on the adolescents, but could also provide literature review of the possible positive impact of the pandemic, or traumatic stressors in general. For example, authors could consult the literature within the field of stress & trauma research that has shown examples of students actually learning other mechanisms of coping with traumatic events that would otherwise go unlearned.
The authors state that the present study uses national representative data pertaining to Korean adolescents collected in 2020 and 2021. The methodology part defined that the study used data from the 15th (2019) and 16th (2020) Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey (KYRBS). This is important to clarify.
("This study uses national representative data pertaining to Korean adolescents collected in 2020 and 2021 to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic"... "This study used data from the 15th (2019) and 16th (2020) Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey (KYRBS) conducted by the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in South Korea."...and again: "This study merged data from the 15th (2019) and the 16th (2020) surveys and used adolescents’ responses from both (54,663 observations from the 15th round, 53,375 observations from the 16th) as the analysis sample.")
Aims of the study should be stated more clearly - for example, if the first is explorative - to explore the differences in adolescents' reports of sleeping/ sitting time/physical activity/ sadness and despair (which should be distinguished from "stress" appearing in Abstract, Measures and Current study sections) in the year before and during the pandemic; and to explore the intervening effect of age; is the second aim ("Furthermore, this study explored specific ways to support adolescents’ healthy and sustainable lives after COVID-19 by examining gender differences in the pandemic’s impact.") - the output of the first aim or the study also aims to propose ways to support sustainable lives after pandemic by examining gender differences of the impact?
Also, when is it “after COVID-19”?
The authors' interest in independent variables investigated, besides the year and gender, were age and socioeconomic status. The authors should give some background to this and present some studies that illuminate the age and SES discrepancies and their impact on adolescent life aspects of interest and sustainable living.
Citations could include, but are not limited to: Doane, L. D., Breitenstein, R. S., Beekman, C., Clifford, S., Smith, T. J., & Lemery-Chalfant, K. (2019). Early Life Socioeconomic Disparities in Children's Sleep: The Mediating Role of the Current Home Environment. Journal of youth and adolescence, 48(1), 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0917-3
Stalsberg, R., & Pedersen, A. V. (2010). Effects of socioeconomic status on the physical activity in adolescents: a systematic review of the evidence. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 20(3), 368–383. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01047.x
Alves, J. M., Yunker, A. G., DeFendis,A., Xiang, A. H., & Page, K. A. (2021). BMI status and associations between affect, physical activity and anxiety among U.S. children during COVID ‐19. Pediatric Obesity. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijpo.12786
Kumar, B., Robinson, R., & Till, S. (2015). Physical activity and health in adolescence. Clinical medicine (London, England), 15(3), 267–272. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.15-3-267
Hallal, P. C., Victora, C. G., Azevedo, M. R., & Wells, J. C. K. (2006). Adolescent Physical Activity and Health. Sports Medicine, 36(12), 1019–1030.https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200636120-00003
Descriptive statistics paragraph - the participants of the study - were the adolescents interviewed? This should be explained clearly in the data collection.
A careful use of gender denominators girls-women and boys-man is advised to be used in the abstract. This further points to the age-span of the sample of adolescents that is not clearly stated in the paper. Providing the age range used for the analysis is necessary especially due to the results showing age to moderate the relationships.
“The older the age of respondents, the more sadness/despair they were likely to feel …” - in what age range is found?
The paper should address more clearly about the found moderating effect of age in the discussion section. In the literature, the age-span of adolescence ranges from 10-24 y.o. How are the differences (that are prominently distinct for 10y olds than for 20yolds) in this time period observed and how could they affect the results? Given the means and SD of age provided in Table 1, the smaller range is assumed here, but discussing the effect is needed as it should also affect the development of policies. For example, different involvement of other parties (parents, teachers) is to be considered for programs for 10 year olds and activities for 17 year olds.
When discussing the results, informing on the measuring points of the survey data collection within the year period could possibly shed more light on why the changes appeared - was it after spending the full year in the pandemic or after the first closures of schools, etc.
The implications of the results stretch to the authors' statement of the possibility to “revert the social life to what it was before the pandemic” , but no discussion is provided on what features of social life (besides academic competition) impact the mental health of adolescents. The authors proceed by inferring that mental health will worsen in the post-pandemic period. Further, they stress the need to change the education policy to ensure healthier mental lives. It is however unclear how the “revert to the social lives” relates to the academic competition which seems a plausible point for creating more sustainable policies that will protect the mental health of adolescents.
Given the title of the paper, the introduction should provide the view of the policies of sustainable living of teenagers preceding the pandemic that could be linked to addressing the implications for policies from this study.
Additionally, I suggest the authors add more empirical background on the sustainable lives of adolescent boys and girls (how does current evidence on gender differences steer policies for sustainable health of adolescent girls and boys). In this sense, the authors should also address whether they answer to the gap research or strengthen the empirical evidence.
In the Implications for policy and practice, the authors address the issue of physical activity, academic burden, and risky behaviours. Besides educational policies, other issues are oriented towards needed activity from the parents and educators and the question remains if the public health or community and (inter)national policies could also respond to the prevention of risk behaviours of adolescents to ensure more sustainable lives.
In the Limitations paragraph authors note that more mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression indicators should be included. In the conclusion the authors connote that the mental health of adolescents could "worsen again" in the post pandemic period which could imply their mental health has increased in the pandemic. The positive changes that the authors captured in this study cannot infer the general conclusions of the positive impact of the pandemic to the mental health of adolescents as the mental health field encompasses many indicators that were not the focus of this study and Sadness and despair (which should be differentiated from "stress" in the Abstract, Measures and Current study sections) and suicidal ideation have been measured by a categorical answer.
Furthermore, the differences in the adolescents sleep/ physical activity/ risky behaviors/ sitting time spent (not) studying in 2019 and 2020 are addressed through regression models which is a plausible method to infer the associations and moderating variables, however, the results are discussed in the light of significant main effects and interactions, and lack the interpretation of effect sizes or estimates that should be pointed towards the strength of the relationships and relevance of the results. Additionally, the variables of interest were measured by a single item question which could, given the large sample that the data is coming from, only direct to the need of purposeful and confirmatory study designs to examine the relative impact of the pandemic to adolescents' life aspects.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
