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A Comment on "Improving Women's Mental Health During a Pandemic"

Author

Listed:
  • Brodeur, Abel
  • Fiala, Lenka
  • Fitzgerald, Jack
  • Kujansuu, Essi
  • Valenta, David
  • Rogeberg, Ole
  • Bensch, Gunther

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"," I4R Discussion Paper Series 207, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:207
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    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)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reproduction; Replication; Mental health; COVID-19 pandemic;
    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

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