Conducting Population Health Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts and Recommendations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper presents current issues about the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the conduct of population health research. A review of the literature was performed in detail and well presented, the discussion provides the author's point of view on the existing problems. I only have a dilemma about structuring the paper. The discussion should be devoted only to the presentation of the views of the author, which are presented in the subchapters "Reflection". The current chapter should be renamed either into a "Review of existing literature" or an arbitrary title related to the topic of the paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review this well-structured and clearly written manuscript. The only thing that struck me in my review is that the authors place a strong emphasis on the limitations of non-virtual face-to-face interactions during the pandemic. While the limitation of such interactions are undoubtedly hurdles for certain methodological approaches, they are not a problem for other methodological approaches as the authors themselves state. With regard to the "impacts" mentioned in the title, I therefore wonder to what extent this actually matters for the majority of population health studies. For the reader, it would certainly be interesting to get an approximate estimate of the proportion of population health studies that rely on the face-to-face interactions mentioned. A more detailed characterization of these studies would then also be desirable. For example, is it primarily qualitative studies that would be affected? What is the approximate proportion of face-to-face interviews in quantitative studies? For what reasons are relatively expensive face-to-face interviews chosen for the latter? These and similar questions could help to draw an even more differentiated picture of the impact of the pandemic in different research settings.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
