Invisible, lonely, and depressed: Unrelenting causal impacts of school closures on immigrant mothers
Pandemic-driven school closures produced unintended negative impacts such as parental stress. But are Dutch parents still navigating the stress years later after the school closures? By leveraging advanced statistical techniques and population-based longitudinal survey data, we seek to examine the medium-term causal effects of school closures on parents’ social, psychological, and mental health outcomes. Our research will inform policies in preparation for future pandemics, promote individual flourishing, and contribute to a healthier, more cohesive society.
Goal
The project's overarching goal is to investigate the causal impact of pandemic school closures on parents’ post-pandemic outcomes and examine the underlying psychological processes. We are particularly interested in the effect of pandemic school closures among vulnerable populations, such as mothers with immigration backgrounds.
Approach
We will apply modern statistical methods for answering causal inquiries to longitudinal survey panel data. In particular, we will leverage artificial intelligence techniques for causal inferences as part of our data-driven analytic approach. Our project team is intentionally interdisciplinary, comprising experts in modern causal inference methods, longitudinal data analyses, and psychological and social science research.
Collaboration partners
This project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from two faculties at Maastricht University: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML), and Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN).
(Expected) Results
The innovative analytic strategy and high-quality data source, conducted by established experts in these research areas, ensure that findings from this project will inform policies for mitigating the adverse impacts of similar measures of school closures in future pandemic situations. The knowledge gained will aid in understanding the prolonged and enduring causal effects of school closures on societal inequality, social cohesion, and population mental health. Moreover, our etiological insights will facilitate developing targeted interventions on lived ostracism to stem or mitigate detrimental downstream effects and protect the vulnerable populations most at risk.