The relationship of school modality with stress and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Variation across sociodemographic groups

The
Covid-19 pandemic and school closures adversely affected adolescents’ mental
health and wellbeing, with the weight of evidence indicating worse outcomes for
students attending school remotely or in hybrid modality compared to fully
in-person. We leverage survey data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive
DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD Studyâ) collected from 6,245 adolescents (mean
age = 13.2) during the 2020-2021 school year to investigate the moderating
effects of race/ethnicity, household income, and neighborhood disadvantage on
the relationship between 2020-2021 school modality and outcomes including perceived
stress, sadness, and positive affect. For relatively-advantaged students, our
results corroborate prior findings that students in remote or hybrid schooling
report worse mental health outcomes than students who attended fully in-person.
However, this pattern between schooling modality and mental health disappears
or reverses for relatively-disadvantaged students. Given substantial
within-group variation, these findings underscore the importance of considering
varied student needs in developing mental health supports.