Epidemiological characteristics and prevalence rates of research reproducibility across disciplines: A scoping review of articles published in 2018-2019.

Background: Reproducibility is a central tenant of research. We aimed to synthesize the literature on reproducibility and describe its epidemiological characteristics, including how reproducibility is defined and assessed. We also aimed to determine and compare estimates for reproducibility across different fields. Methods: We conducted a scoping review to identify English language replication studies published between 2018 and 2019 in economics, education, psychology, health sciences, and biomedicine. We searched Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature - CINAHL, Education Source via EBSCOHost, ERIC, EconPapers, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), and EconLit. Documents retrieved were screened in duplicate against our inclusion criteria. We extracted year of publication, number of authors, country of affiliation of the corresponding author, and whether the study was funded. For the individual replication studies, we recorded whether a registered protocol for the replication study was used, whether there was contact between the reproducing team and the original authors, what study design was used, and what the primary outcome was. Finally, we recorded how reproducibilty was defined by the authors, and whether the assessed study(ies) successfully reproduced based on this definition. Extraction was done by a single reviewer and quality controlled by a second reviewer. Results: Our search identified 11,224 unique documents, of which 47 were included in this review. Most studies were related to either psychology (48.6%) or health sciences (23.7%). Among these 47 documents, 36 described a single reproducibility study while the remaining 11 reported at least two reproducibility studies in the same paper. Less than the half of the studies referred to a registered protocol. There was variability in the definitions of reproduciblity success. In total, across the 47 documents 177 studies were reported. Based on the definition used by the author of each study, 95 of 177 (53.7%) studies reproduced. Conclusions: This study gives an overview of research across five disciplines that explicitly set out to reproduce previous research. Such reproducibility studies are extremely scarce, the definition of a successfully reproduced study is ambiguous, and the reproducibility rate is overall modest. Funding: No external funding was received for this work.

Insomnia, Pre-Sleep Arousal, Psychosocial Factors and Changes in Sleep Pattern during the Second Wave Lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Georgia.

Studies performed across the COVID-19 pandemic waves point to the persistent impact of the pandemic on sleep and mental health. We expand these data by examining insomnia, pre-sleep arousal, psychosocial factors, and retrospective changes in sleep pattern during the COVID-19 second wave lockdown period in Georgia. Data were collected through an online survey (n = 1117). The prevalence rate of probable insomnia disorder was 24.2%. Clinically relevant somatic and cognitive pre-sleep arousal was present in 49.8% and 58.0% of participants, and high levels of anxiety, depression and social isolation were found in 47.0%, 37.3%, 47.2% of respondents, respectively. We observed high prevalence rates of worse sleep quality, delayed bedtimes and risetimes, longer sleep latencies, higher awakenings and shorter sleep durations, relative to the pre-pandemic period. COVID-19-infected participants showed more severe sleep and mental problems. Specific predictors differentially affected insomnia, somatic and cognitive pre-sleep arousal. Depression and COVID-19 infection emerged as vulnerability factors for pre-sleep arousal, which, in turn, was associated with a higher predisposition to insomnia disorder. We confirm the strong deteriorating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sleep and psychosocial well-being during the second wave lockdown period. The specific association between pre-sleep arousal, insomnia, and psychosocial factors is of clinical relevance for the prevention of severity and persistence of sleep and mental problems across the repeated lockdown/reopening waves. Modulation of pre-sleep arousal may prove beneficial to implement targeted interventions.