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. 2022 Dec 2:10:1052727.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1052727. eCollection 2022.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected young people?-Mapping knowledge structure and research framework by scientometric analysis

Xiangfei Li  1 , Jiahui Yu  1
Affiliations

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected young people?-Mapping knowledge structure and research framework by scientometric analysis

Xiangfei Li et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a large body of literature focusing on the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and young people. The purpose of this study is to explore the current research status and the specific mechanism of COVID-19's effects on young people based on related literature. This paper mainly used VOS viewer and CiteSpace software to conduct a scientometric analysis of 5,077 publications retrieved from the Web of Science database. The results show that the main contributors to the field were mainly from North America and Europe, and the trend of research focus was from shallow to deep. The five main research areas in the field were summarized by keyword clustering analysis as follows: lifestyle changes due to lockdown; changes in stress and emotions; psychological illness and trauma; risk perception and practice toward the epidemic; interventions and social support. Finally, they were linked by four pathways to form a framework that integrates the relationships between the five domains and between elements within each of them, revealing the mechanism of COVID-19's effect on young people. In addition, less studied but promising elements are also presented in the framework, such as research on special groups (disadvantaged socioeconomic groups and sexual minority youth) and extreme suicidal tendencies that deserve our further attention.

Keywords: COVID-19; CiteSpace; VOS viewer; adolescent; children; lifestyle; mental health; teenager.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Trends in the number of publications from 2020 to 2022. (B) Geographical distribution based on the number of articles issued by various countries/regions. (C) Inter-country/region cooperation relationship map. (D) Citation network visualization map of institutions.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) The network visualization map of subject categories created with CiteSpace software. (B) The dual-map overlay of the journals.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Co-citation network visualization map of journals by VOS viewer. (B) Co-citation network visualization map of references by VOS viewer.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A) Co-occurrence overlay visualization map of high-frequency keywords. (B) Bubble charts of research topics.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Keyword network map consisting of five clusters.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The framework of the effect of COVID-19 on young people, based on high-frequency keywords and cluster analysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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