Self-Perceived Loneliness and Depression During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Two-Wave Replication Study

Date: 11 February 2022

Handling Editor: Dr Matthew O. Gribble

Editorial decision: Request revision. The Handling Editor requested revisions; the article has been returned to the authors to make this revision. Teh Editor notes the following to be addressed:

• What is the connection between this work and the primary themes of this environmental journal? Please be sure to clearly and properly situate the work within Planetary Health, GeoHealth, One Health, or another environmental health paradigm to contextualize your research on loneliness and depression as connected to an environmental challenge. This journal has primarily environmental audiences.
• Several of the reviewers raised concerns about methodological rigor, in particular regarding the data analysis approach. The investigators should better justify their approach or, if they agree with the reviewer that the assumptions of their approach are inconsistent with the design of the study, use an alternative approach. The investigators do not necessarily need to adopt the specific statistical test recommended by the reviewer, as there are other options that would also be appropriate, but the choice of data analysis approach should be clearly presented with the key assumptions of that approach and why that is suitable for the study design, data structure, and scientific hypothesis (or parameter) of interest.
• It may be difficult for the authors to respond to the sample size concerns raised regarding the approach chosen for data analysis; some discussion of what the implications of this sample size limitation may be for results and overall study conclusions would be appropriate. Sensitivity analyses to assess robustness of findings to model assumption violations, interpolation over sparse data, etc. are always welcome.

Date: 12 October 2021

Handling Editor: Prof Dan Osborn and Dr Matthew O. Gribble

This article is a preprint article and has not been peer-reviewed. It is under consideration following submission to UCL Open: Environment for open peer review.

Date: 12 October 2021

Handling Editor: Prof Dan Osborn

This article is a preprint article and has not been peer-reviewed. It is under consideration following submission to UCL Open: Environment for open peer review.

Date: 12 October 2021

Handling Editor: Prof Dan Osborn

This article is a preprint article and has not been peer-reviewed. It is under consideration following submission to UCL Open: Environment for open peer review.