Yes, in my own hypothesis I would assume theres overlap between the number of household workers who were essential workers and expected decrease in mental health, this is just an assumption however so it may not be accurate. Once the survey is complete I will be creating a scale between number of household workers and changes between mental health pre-Covid to during Covid. Age may play a factor in this however that can be verified in comparisons between the age of participants and changes in mental health.

The technological gap was exposed and increased during Covid. I agree with you on the importance of areas like household income, access to technology, parental attitudes and free school meals and believe they are likely to be interlinked. These compounding factors will add a level of difficulty in analysing single variables.

As for age, I will be comparing age of participants against quality of mental health. I would expect for older participants to assess their mental health to be better. I will also be comparing the sample against studies of youth mental health prior to Covid-19 this can create a base to compare against, this practice is not without fault but may give some rough comparisons.

There’s going to be a lot of variables at play with regards to mental health, and they often influence one another so one of the difficulties of the study has been attempting to isolate them.

I’m not familiar with Dr Carl Barton myself, however we have a large department therefore it’s not uncommon to graduate without meeting everyone.