IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17782.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Comment on “Improving Women’s Mental Health During a Pandemic”

Author

Listed:
  • Brodeur, Abel

    (University of Ottawa)

  • Fiala, Lenka

    (University of Bergen)

  • Fitzgerald, Jack

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Kujansuu, Essi

    (University of Innsbruck)

  • Valenta, David

    (University of Ottawa)

  • Rogeberg, Ole

    (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research)

  • Bensch, Gunther

    (RWI)

Abstract

Vlassopoulos et al. (2024) find that after providing two hours of telephone counseling over three months, a sample of Bangladeshi women saw significant reductions in stress and depression after ten months. We find three anomalies. First, estimates are almost entirely driven by reverse-scored survey items, which are handled inconsistently both in the code and in the field. Second, participants in this experiment are reused from multiple prior experiments conducted by the paper’s authors, and estimates are extremely sensitive to the experiment from which participants originate. Finally, inconsistencies and irregularities in raw survey files raise doubts about the data.

Suggested Citation

  • Brodeur, Abel & Fiala, Lenka & Fitzgerald, Jack & Kujansuu, Essi & Valenta, David & Rogeberg, Ole & Bensch, Gunther, 2025. "A Comment on “Improving Women’s Mental Health During a Pandemic”," IZA Discussion Papers 17782, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17782
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17782.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McGuire, Joel & Kaiser, Caspar & Bach-Mortensen, Anders, 2020. "The impact of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health in low- and middle- income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis," SocArXiv ydr54_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Victoria Baranov & Sonia Bhalotra & Pietro Biroli & Joanna Maselko, 2020. "Maternal Depression, Women's Empowerment, and Parental Investment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(3), pages 824-859, March.
    3. McGuire, Joel & Kaiser, Caspar & Bach-Mortensen, Anders, 2020. "The impact of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health in low- and middle- income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis," SocArXiv ydr54, Center for Open Science.
    4. Abu Siddique & Tabassum Rahman & Debayan Pakrashi & Asad Islam & Firoz Ahmed, 2024. "Raising Health Awareness in Rural Communities: A Randomized Experiment in Bangladesh and India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(3), pages 638-654, May.
    5. Firoz Ahmed & Roland Hodler & Asad Islam, 2024. "Partisan Effects of Information Campaigns in Competitive Authoritarian Elections: Evidence from Bangladesh," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1303-1330.
    6. Tabassum Rahman & M D Golam Hasnain & Asad Islam, 2021. "Food insecurity and mental health of women during COVID-19: Evidence from a developing country," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(7), pages 1-18, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fiala, Lenka & Kjelsrud, Anders & Kujansuu, Essi & Brodeur, Abel, 2025. "Comment on "Food insecurity and mental health of women during COVID-19: Evidence from a developing country" by Rahman et al," I4R Discussion Paper Series 210, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    2. Michael Vlassopoulos & Abu Siddique & Tabassum Rahman & Debayan Pakrashi & Asad Islam & Firoz Ahmed, 2024. "Improving Women's Mental Health during a Pandemic," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 422-455, April.
    3. Lea Cassar & Mira Fischer & Vanessa Valero, 2022. "Keep Calm and Carry On: Immediate-vs. Six-Month Effects of Mindfulness Training on Academic Performance," CESifo Working Paper Series 10099, CESifo.
    4. Menta, Giorgia & Lepinteur, Anthony & Clark, Andrew E. & Ghislandi, Simone & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2023. "Maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    5. Franziska Gassmann & Bruno Martorano & Jennifer Waidler, 2022. "How Social Assistance Affects Subjective Wellbeing: Lessons from Kyrgyzstan," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(4), pages 827-847, April.
    6. Esteban García-Miralles & Miriam Gensowski, 2020. "Are Children's Socio-Emotional Skills Shaped by Parental Health Shocks?," CEBI working paper series 20-21, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    7. Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo & Erin Grela & Madeline McKelway & Frank Schilbach & Garima Sharma & Girija Vaidyanathan, 2022. "Depression and Loneliness Among the Elderly Poor," NBER Working Papers 30330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Arenas-Arroyo, Esther & Schmidpeter, Bernhard, 2022. "Spillover effects of immigration policies on children's human capital," Ruhr Economic Papers 974, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    9. Lea Cassar & Mira Fischer & Vanessa Valero, 2022. "Keep Calm and Carry On: The Short- vs. Long-Run Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on (Academic) Performance," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0002, Berlin School of Economics.
    10. Mateus Dias & Luiz Felipe Fontes, 2024. "The Effects of a Large-Scale Mental Health Reform: Evidence from Brazil," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 257-289, August.
    11. Luca Braghieri & Ro'ee Levy & Alexey Makarin, 2022. "Social Media and Mental Health," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(11), pages 3660-3693, November.
    12. Angelucci, Manuela & Bennett, Daniel M, 2021. "The Economic Impact of Depression Treatment in India," IZA Discussion Papers 14393, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Cho,Yoonyoung & Molina,Teresa Sacro, 2024. "The Importance of Existing Social Protection Programs for Mental Health in Pandemic Times," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10669, The World Bank.
    14. Manuela Angelucci & Daniel Bennett, 2024. "The Economic Impact of Depression Treatment in India: Evidence from Community-Based Provision of Pharmacotherapy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(1), pages 169-198, January.
    15. Bui, Dzung & Dräger, Lena & Hayo, Bernd & Nghiem, Giang, 2022. "The effects of fiscal policy on households during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Thailand and Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    16. Nakawala Lufumpa & Anne Hilger & Odyssia Ng & Bénédicte Leroy De la Brière, 2023. "Protecting Human Capital from the Impact of Early Life Shocks [Protéger le capital humain de l’impact des chocs survenus en début de vie]," World Bank Publications - Reports 39964, The World Bank Group.
    17. Farzana Afridi & Amrita Dhillon & Sanchari Roy, 2021. "The gendered crisis: livelihoods and mental well-being in India during COVID-19," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-65, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Juliana Sanchez-Ariza, 2022. "Conflict, parenting, and early childhood mental health in conflict-affected settings: Evidence from Colombia," Documentos CEDE 20639, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    19. Monica Harber Carney, 2021. "The impact of mental health parity laws on birth outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 748-765, April.
    20. Rakshit, Sonali & Sahoo, Soham, 2023. "Biased teachers and gender gap in learning outcomes: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    reproduction; replication; mental health; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17782. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.