Logo UNICEF Innocenti
Office of Research-Innocenti
menu icon

Children and COVID-19 Research Library

UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 + Children research

RESULTS:   6640     SORT BY:

ADVANCED SEARCH:

Select one or more filter options and click search below.

PUBLICATION DATE:
UNICEF Innocenti Publication
UNICEF Publication
Open Access
JOURNAL ACCESS FOR UNICEF STAFF CONTACT US
2761 - 2775 of 6640
Super-spreaders or victims of circumstance? Childhood in Canadian media reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic: a critical content analysis

AUTHOR(S)
Sarah Ciotti; Shannon A. Moore; Maureen Connolly (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Healthcare
This qualitative research study, a critical content analysis, explores Canadian media reporting of childhood in Canada during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Popular media plays an important role in representing and perpetuating the dominant social discourse in highly literate societies. In Canadian media, the effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents’ health and wellbeing are overshadowed by discussions of the potential risk they pose to adults. The results of this empirical research highlight how young people in Canada have been uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Two dominant narratives emerged from the data: children were presented “as a risk” to vulnerable persons and older adults and “at risk” of adverse health outcomes from contracting COVID-19 and from pandemic lockdown restrictions. This reflects how childhood was constructed in Canadian society during the pandemic, particularly how children’s experiences are described in relation to adults. Throughout the pandemic, media reports emphasized the role of young people’s compliance with public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save the lives of older persons.
Cite this research | Open access | Vol.: 10 | Issue: 1 | No. of pages: 10 | Language: English | Topics: Health | Tags: child health, communication, COVID-19 response, disease control, information, lockdown, media, social distance | Countries: Canada
Implications of updated protocol for classification of childhood malnutrition and service delivery in world’s largest refugee camp amid this COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Afsana Anwar; Probal Kumar Mondal; Uday Narayan Yadav (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Public Health Nutrition

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities made a change in the classification of malnutrition and concomitant service delivery protocol among the Rohingya children, residing in world’s largest refugee camp, located in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. In this paper, we discussed the potential implications of this updated protocol on the malnutrition status among children residing in the Rohingya camps. This paper reviewed relevant literature and authors’ own experience to provide a perspective of the updated protocol for the classification of malnutrition among the children in the Rohingya camps and its implication from a broader perspective.

Child care and participation in the Global South: an anthropological study from squatter houses in Buenos Aires

AUTHOR(S)
Pía Leavy; Paula Nurit Shabel

Published: January 2022   Journal: Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal
Children and teenagers are often considered as objects of care or as subjects who have the right to be cared for. However, in squatter houses in Buenos Aires, they often take on responsibilities that challenge the ways we understand childcare and participation. This article sets out to analyse the experiences of girls and young women. To do so, it carried out ethnographic work with girls aged 8–19 years within two occupied buildings in a Buenos Aires neighbourhood before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, studying its consequent measures of isolation and social distancing. Firstly, it describes how health measures applied to contain the pandemic reinforced certain stereotypes about children and their care. Secondly, it analyzes the participation of these children in production and reproduction activities inside and outside their homes. This analysis includes the ways in which they deployed strategies for their own care, based on their activism in a political organisation. The analysed material shows tensions between care and participation that occur in the daily practices of young women who inhabit these spaces, which are crossed by moral and legal duties as well as by material needs and violence.
COVID-19 and children’s screen time in Ceará, Brazil: a repeated cross-sectional survey

AUTHOR(S)
Hermano Alexandre Lima Rocha; Luciano Lima Correia; Álvaro Jorge Madeiro Leite (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Children and Media
The present study assessed changes in screen time exposure among 3–6-year-old children in Ceará, Brazil, in 2017 and in 2020 during the pandemic. Data from a state-wide repeated cross-sectional survey were analyzed. The COVID impact research was conducted by phone interviews. American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines were used to define elevated screen exposure. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of children with screen exposure above recommended levels was 96.8% among 3–4-year-old and 84.2% among 5–6-year-old children. There was a significant increase in proportion of 3–4-year-old children with elevated screen time (risk difference 15.8%; 95% confidence interval (CI): 12.3–19.2; p-value < 0.001). Children participating in remote learning activities had significantly lower television time with a mean difference of −0.8 hours daily (95% CI −0.3 – −1.3; p-value: 0.003) as compared to children not participating in remote learning. The necessary COVID-19 response measures appear to increase screen time among 3–6-year-old children in Ceará, Brazil. Interventions to reduce excess screen time, potentially participation in remote early learning activities should be developed and evaluated in Brazil.
Educational participation of young refugees in the context of digitized settings

AUTHOR(S)
Nadia Kutscher; Jana Hüttmann; Michi S. Fujii (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Information, Communication & Society
This article focuses on the educational participation of young refugees in the context of digitalized settings. Education policies often consider digital media beneficial for the educational participation of disadvantaged groups, or vulnerable groups facing many challenges in education and society, such as young people with a forced migration background. Moreover, digital media are highly relevant in the everyday lives of young refugees. Our 3-5-year (02/2019-07/2022) research project focuses on the trans-organizational orientation occurring in different everyday media-permeated life contexts of young refugees, which includes the formal educational setting of school, the non-formal setting of child and youth welfare, and informal contexts in the everyday life of young refugees. Through combining grounded theory, ethnography, and neo-praxeological methodologies, organizational cross-connections and cross-relations were revealed in practices and arrangements, involving digital artifacts as well as human actors. This article presents methodological insights into distributed educational practices concerning understanding information, acquiring knowledge, and developing agency in which digital media are implicated. Emerging dimensions of educational inequalities within digitalized educational contexts, which became apparent during lockdown periods in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, are discussed.
Adolescent psychosocial adjustment during COVID-19: an intensive longitudinal study

AUTHOR(S)
Ming-Te Wang; Daphne A. Henry; Christina L. Scanlon (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

COVID-19 has presented threats to adolescents’ psychosocial well-being, especially for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This longitudinal study aimed to identify which social (i.e., family conflict, parental social support, peer social support), emotional (i.e., COVID-19 health-related stress), and physical (i.e., sleep quality, food security) factors influence adolescents’ same- and next-day affect and misconduct and whether these factors functioned differently by adolescents’ economic status. Daily-diary approaches were used to collect 12,033 assessments over 29 days from a nationwide sample of American adolescents (n =546; Mage = 15.0; 40% male; 43% Black, 37% White, 10% Latinx, 8% Asian American, and 3% Native American; 61% low-income) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Childhood confined by COVID-19 in Italy and the impacts on the right to education

AUTHOR(S)
Fernando Donizete Alves; Aline Sommerhalder; Concetta La Rocca (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: International Journal of Early Years Education
This article aimed to assess the impact of school closures in Italy on children's lives, particularly in Early Childhood Education, as a result of the Covid-19 containment measures. A set of documents published by the Italian government related to the measures to contain the covid-19 were analyzed. Based on content analysis, three categories of analysis were defined: 1) containment measures and social life; 2) school closures and distance education; 3) the return of face-to-face activities in early childhood education. The results indicated that the containment measures imposed severe restrictions on children's social interaction, such as the closing of public and private spaces (parks, museums, etc.) and the impossibility of moments of interaction and collective play. They impacted the right to education by closing schools when distance education was implemented as a measure to reduce potential damage to children's learning and overall development. For the resumption of in-person activities in schools, there should be priority use of open spaces, social distancing, and measures of personal and collective hygiene. Another significant result is the consideration of daycare centers and pre-school as essential services by the Italian government.
“Lessons from lockdown: could pandemic schooling help change education?”

AUTHOR(S)
Harriet D. A. Pattison

Published: January 2022   Journal: Pedagogy, Culture & Society
This paper uses qualitative data from a survey of Higher Education students, who are also parents, to reveal changing attitudes towards, and perceptions of, education during the pandemic school closures in England. Thematic analysis reveals the stresses of ‘homeschooling’ and how parents reacted and adapted to these, including adjusting ideas around education. This adaptation mirrors the changing attitudes of parents found in pre-pandemic home education. The paper suggests that post pandemic education could be enriched by taking forward some of these ideas, particularly greater flexibility, personalisation and child autonomy in education.
‘The slow pandemic’: youth’s climate activism and the stakes for youth movements under Covid-19

AUTHOR(S)
Georgina Christou; Eleni Theodorou; Spyros Spyrou

Published: January 2022   Journal: Children's Geographies
Pandemic conditions have affected social movement activity in various ways. This article explorea how young Cypriot climate activists, associated with the global Fridays for Future movement, attempt to integrate pandemic conditions in their mobilizing tactics, as well as how such conditions affect their collective youth agency. It first looks into the strategic antagonistic framings they develop to counter dominant discourses of the pandemic as an unprecedented crisis and explores how these are informed by their understandings of, and emotions on, climate change as an effect of capitalism and overconsumption and as a type of ‘slow pandemic’.
Significant increase in astigmatism in children after study at home during the COVID-19 lockdown

AUTHOR(S)
Yuanyuan Liang; Tsz-Wing Leung; Jinxiao Tina Lian (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Clinical and Experimental Optometry

Evaluating changes in refractive astigmatism after ‘study at home’ during the COVID pandemic may shed light on the aetiology of refractive errors. This study aims to investigate whether there has been a change in the proportion of astigmatism among primary school children after the school closure period during the COVID-19 pandemic.This observational study compared cross-sectional (2018: n = 112; 2020: n = 173) and longitudinal data (n = 38) collected from two vision screenings, one in 2018 and the other after the school closure period in 2020, in the same primary school for children aged 8–10 years. Non-cycloplegic refraction and axial length were measured using an open‐field auto‐refractometer and IOL Master, respectively. A questionnaire focusing on demographic information, near-work time, and outdoor activities was administered to parents of all participants.

Hispanic race is a risk factor for COVID-19 during pregnancy: data from an urban New York City hospital

AUTHOR(S)
Deena Elkafrawi; Giovanni Sisti; Felipe Mercado (et al.)

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

There are limited studies on predisposing factors for COVID-19 positivity in asymptomatic pregnant women. The literature published to date on asymptomatic COVID-19 pregnant carriers does not focus on pregnancy or pre-pregnancy comorbidities. This study wanted to identify risk factors for COVID-19 in asymptomatic pregnant women. It performed a retrospective chart review of 263 asymptomatic pregnant women admitted to labour and delivery at New York City Health + Hospitals/Lincoln. It analysed the association between race, body mass index (BMI), smoking, indication for admission, gravidity, parity, pre-pregnancy comorbidity, pregnancy comorbidity via uni- and multivariate statistical tests. Only Hispanic race was significant in the univariate analysis (p = .049). At the post-hoc analysis, Hispanics had a higher proportion of COVID-19 cases compared to non-Hispanic Blacks (p = .019). No variables were significantly associated with COVID-19 positivity in the multivariate analysis.

Linking maternal involvement in child online learning to child adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic: the moderating role of maternal mindfulness

AUTHOR(S)
Chun Bun Lam; Chung Sze Lam; Kevin Kien Hoa Chung

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
In the face of COVID-19, many schools have to educate their students using online activities. During this time, whether and how parents are involved may be of particular importance for young children—who are less able to learn independently via the Internet due to their developmental immaturity. Therefore, this study examined the cross-sectional association of maternal involvement in child online learning with child adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic and tested maternal mindfulness as a moderator. Data were collected from 236 mothers of kindergarten-aged children (mean age = 55.91 months; 75% of them were girls) during the fourth wave of COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong, China. Using paper-and-pencil questionnaires, mothers rated their involvement and mindfulness and their children’s pre-academic ability and internalizing and externalizing behaviors and provide demographic information.
Parenting during a pandemic: predictors of parental burnout

AUTHOR(S)
Cara S. Swit; Rose Breen

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Family Issues
The global pandemic, COVID-19, has resulted in significant changes in many aspects of our lives. For parents, the impact has been great as they combine work, family, and homeschooling while maintaining the wellbeing of themselves and their family. COVID-19 has brought about challenges that many parents have not faced before, putting them at risk for parental burnout. The goal of this study was to investigate risk and protective factors that predict parental burnout during COVID-19. Eighty-six parents (75 mothers; Mage = 40.73; SD = 7.88) living in New Zealand during COVID-19 lockdown participated in the survey.
Student parents or parent students in lockdown pandemic? A third space approach

AUTHOR(S)
Z. Nikiforidou; Sarah E. Holmes

Published: January 2022   Journal: Journal of Family Issues
The pandemic has affected families in many ways. Parents, who at the same time are studying, tend to be an under-represented cohort of adult learners, and in this study, their experiences and reflections, on how they navigated through their dual identities during lockdown, are explored. Through an online survey, 91 student parents from 20 different higher education institutions in the United Kingdom shared their views as to how they balanced their parenting and studying responsibilities during lockdown in early 2021. Findings indicate how student parents felt both their roles were impacted rather negatively, but also how the pandemic provided them opportunities for bridging and resisting binaries, through the emergence of a Third Space (Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. New York, NY: Routledge; Soja, E. W. (1996). Third space: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Malden, MA: Blackwell). The study shows how student parents re-positioned their identities, identified ways to manage disruptions caused by the lockdown and acknowledged family time and family relationships as very important. 
The impact of a messaging intervention on parents’ school hesitancy during COVID-19

AUTHOR(S)
Morgan S. Polikoff; Daniel Silver; Marshall Garland (et al.)

Published: January 2022
During the 2020-21 school year, families' access to--and desire to participate in--in-person schooling was highly stratified along racial and income lines. Research to date suggests that "school hesitancy" was driven by concerns about "fit" and safety, as well as simple access to in-person opportunities. In the context of a nationally-representative survey study, we tested the impact of targeted messaging on parents' reported willingness to send their children back for in-person learning in the 2021-22 school year. This study's results suggest that specific messages focused on either fit or safety issues outperform generic messages--they substantially increase the reported likelihood for previously-unsure parents to send their children back for in-person learning (while having no effect on parents who already reported they would or would not send their children back). The results have direct implications for education agencies seeking to address school hesitancy as the pandemic continues.
2761 - 2775 of 6640

UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE DATABASE

Subscribe to updates on new research about COVID-19 & children

SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Share:

facebook twitter linkedin google+ reddit print email
Article Article

Check our quarterly thematic digests on children and COVID-19

Each quarterly thematic digest features the latest evidence drawn from the Children and COVID-19 Research Library on a particular topic of interest.
Campaign Campaign

COVID-19 & Children: Rapid Research Response

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.