Investigating Longitudinal Trajectories of COVID-19 Disruption: Methodological Challenges and Recommendations.

ABSTRACT: Relatively few studies have longitudinally investigated how COVID-19 has disrupted the lives and health of youth beyond the first year of the pandemic. This may be because longitudinal researchers face complex challenges in figuring out how to code time, account for changes in COVID-19 spread, and model longitudinal COVID-19-related trajectories across environmental contexts. This manuscript considers each of these three methodological issues by modeling trajectories of COVID-19 disruption in 1080 youth from 12 cultural groups in nine nations between March 2020-July 2022 using multilevel modeling. Our findings suggest that for studies that attempt to examine cross-cultural longitudinal trajectories during COVID-19, starting such trajectories on March 11, 2020, measuring disruption along 6-

SUBMITTER: Rothenberg WA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12019998 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature