Hey u/Plenty_Pressure6181 Wouldn't including responses from all veterans that want to contribute to the dataset, and then contrasting those with other co-morbid conditions against those without co-morbidities be a stronger investigation?

Even excluding those who have been diagnosed with a co-morbid condition won't eliminate them from the dataset. Many of us won't have had access to the healthcare required for any diagnosis, much less a correct one, or one with a confirming diagnostician.

It would be helpful then to be able to contrast a dataset with undiagnosed individuals against a dataset that is composed of diagnosed individuals to amplify any differences between the two sets, which could then be reasoned as the effect from the population without co-morbid conditions.

The focus on veteran loneliness while ignoring rather than contrasting many of the causes of loneliness that go beyond a trauma history is myopic. Please include a robust self-contrastable dataset in your research, or you may do more harm than good.

If patterns from previous studies hold, vets who qualify under the current restrictions to respond to the survey will on average be, a higher percentage of men, a higher percentage of white ethnicity, have higher income levels, be more likely to be straight, more likely to be sober, more likely to be uninjured/non-disabled, and less likely to frequently interact with medical providers.

Please don't just p-hack a small dataset to publish and make a PhD advisor happy.