Please paraphrase questions a-f

You can change it up if necessary but please include

"which aspect of mental health you will specifically focus on,

how you will carry out the study,

what sort of study participants you will need for each design,

what information should be collected to investigate this link,

what measure of association/effect can be obtained from each design,

what will be one specific confounding factor individually for each of the six study designs

and how or why each confounder will affect the findings of your study for every design.

There will be no mark for repetition of same confounding factor for more than one study design."

Background information on the question:

You are a practicing health professional and you are intrigued with the possibility of a link between mental health issues and excessive 'screen time'. People are commonly found with eyes glued to their phones and other digital devices that are commonly available these days and there is a surge in mental health related issues and problems. You have already searched the current literature but unfortunately most studies had flaws that you could easily identify. You are considering doing your own research to explore the potential link.

You will briefly describe the above aspects as one paragraph for each of the following designs while following the formatting & line-limit instructions provided below.

You can use the review exercise (tutorial 11) as a general guide but address only those aspects that are listed above. Please also re-visit the weekly epidemiology ilectures on study designs.

These are the paragraphs I am hoping you can paraphrase -(No through a paraphrasing tool).

a) Cross-sectional study

I will design this study by focusing on the mental health issue of anxiety. I will carry out this study by sending out a survey. I need a cross section of a population or community to be able to formulate if there is a link between screen time and anxiety. This can be achieved by sending out a survey to first-year Curtin students. The information that I will collect would be if each participant has a phone, how many hours they spend on their phone, what is the major purpose they use their phone for, if they experience anxiety and to rate their anxiety levels on that day from a scale of 1-10 (1 being minimal and 10 being extremely anxious). This will then measure the prevalence ratio of anxiety in this population with those who have a phone or don't. A confounding factor would be other life stresses such as academic stress that can be the reason why a participant experiences anxiety which can lead to unreliable results

b) Case Control study

I will carry out this study by recruiting two groups, one group that experiences anxiety and takes medications for it and another group that does not experience anxiety thus does not take medications for it. This can be done by a structured interview to measure odds ratio. The study participants must be similar in age from 18-22 and equal distribution of gender in both groups. The information gathered from each case and control would be to report their exposure of screen time and how many hours a day they spend on an electronic device. A confounding factor that can impact the findings can be each participants socio-economic status as not everyone who experiences anxiety can afford medications to ease them of its impacts which can lead to invalid results.

c) Prospective Cohort study.

To analyze if screen time has an impact on mental health, I will conduct a research to see if working long hours on a computer can lead to anxiety. I will carry out this study design by following a group of 10 individuals who do not experience anxiety but are starting a computing internship job over a month. I will collect data before and after their first month at their office job. The participants must be around the age of 18-22 with an equal distribution of gender on both groups. After a week, I will assess each participants anxiety levels on a scale of 1-10 to analyze the relative risk as a measure of effect before and after the exposure. A confounding factor that can impact the findings is financial stress that can be the reason why participants develop anxiety, thus producing invalid results.

d) Retrospective Cohort study.

I will carry out this study by defining a cohort as anyone who has been diagnosed with anxiety at a certain clinic from 2020-2022. The study participants must be 18-22 with similar SES. Through a structured interview, I will ask about their lifestyle choices, medical history, and average screen time to analyze the origins of their anxiety. This can be determined through medical reports or previous diagnoses. Through the collected data I will determine the relative risk as a measure of effect to assess if there is a link between screen time and developing anxiety. A confounding factor could be incomplete records of the past which can make it harder to analyze the exposure.

e) Quasi-experimental study.

To analyze if screen time can have a negative impact on mental health, I will follow two groups and collect data on if their screen time leads to heightened feelings of anxiety. I will conduct this study by following a group of year 7 students in one school that do not use laptops or computers, and another group of year 7 students who do use laptops and computers. Information I will gather from the two classes would be about how much screen time they receive, their levels of anxiety, and their state of mental health before and after their first month of year 7 to assess the intervention. This will then help in distinguishing the relative risk of screen time on the students. A confounding factor could be that the students may have electron devices at home that can increase or decrease their feelings of anxiety

f) Randomized Controlled Trial.

I will carry out this study by having two randomized groups, one with and intervention and one without, to see if screen time can lead to anxiety. These two groups will be similar in age, gender, and SES background. This is to analyze if screen time can have a negative impact on mental health to cause anxiety. One group will be the controlled group while the other will have a screen time limit of 1 hour a day. I will collect data from each participant before and after the trial describing their anxiety levels and mental health status as well as how long they spent on an electronic device. By having a post-test we can record the outcome of the exposure of screen time and compare the two groups based on the measure of effect. A confounding effect would be that it would be heavily dependent on if the participants are compliant otherwise it will develop invalid results.