An Analysis by State on The Effect of Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 Due to COVID-19 on Malaysians’ Mental Health: Evidence from Google Trends

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the introductory section, further development of the findings of international studies that show the variation in search volume in Google Trends (GT) in terms related to mental health after imposing restrictive measures of movement limitation and confinement could be appropriate. This would be relevant in order to show the usefulness of the GT tool to raise an application in Malaysia. This information could complement the alluded benefits of using GT in this context.

In the statement of the objective (as well as in the title) it would be relevant to specify that reference is made to stress and sleep as the only terms or aspects related to mental health that will be explored with GT. For example, the title refers to "anxiety" which, considering the terms analyzed in GT, would not be appropriate.

In the Method section, the reason why the indicated terms are chosen to carry out their analysis in GT should be justified, and it should be further explained why other terms are not included (the justification provided could be used for a multitude of terms related to general psychopathological symptomatology). It would also be necessary to specify in which categories of web queries the search was made (science, health, news, literature, etc.)

In the graphical analysis of the results section, why is only the data referring to three states included and not all the states analyzed? This aspect could be adapted and justified.

In the discussion and conclusions section, the inferences that can be drawn from the analysis of web searches in GT should be carefully considered. In this sense, searches in GT could not be considered directly as an indicator of “levels of psychological distress” in different states. It would be necessary to consider the findings as variations of the public interest in the terms of stress and sleep, and based on this interpretation, develop the possibility of a greater impact of OLS 3.0 on mental health related to stress-sleep in different ways depending on the state. The limitations of GT should be explored further, in this sense it should be noted that the data it provides are relative (not absolute), the importance of spelling in searches, that different terms may be used to search for information on stress and sleep to those used in this study, etc.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, we are grateful for your consideration of this manuscript, and we also very much appreciate your suggestions, which have been very helpful in improving the manuscript. All the comments we received on this manuscript have been taken into account in improving the quality.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors used Google Trends data to compare search trends in psychological distress before and after the Movement Control order through the search pattern of ‘stress’ and ‘sleep’ in English. Differences in difference method was used to compare the trends in 2019 against 2021 in order to remove seasonal effect. The analysis showed state-level differences in Google Trend search terms. Overall, the idea of using Google Trend is appealing, I have few comments may make the paper more solid.

 

1. It would be nice to see a justification for the choice of using the data from 2019 versus 2018 or 2020. 

2. For nation-wide analysis, more rigorous methods like mixed effect model or GEE can be used to account for the inter-state heterogeneity. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2, we are grateful for your consideration of this manuscript, and we also very much appreciate your suggestions, which have been very helpful in improving the manuscript. All the comments we received on this manuscript have been taken into account in improving the quality.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for your reply. In general, the main aspects raised in the recommendations made in the review of the manuscript have been addressed. Perhaps the response to the suggested changes in the response to reviewers could have been a bit more detailed.