Annex 1: Systematic literature search – methodology

A systematic literature search was conducted by two librarians, Alena Lindfors and Ulrika Gabrielsson, at Dalarna University. Based on the identified main areas of school and the workplace, the COVID-19 pandemic and notions and norms of masculinity, three sub-searches were created. The searches around the main theme of the pandemic were conducted in March 2022 in four databases, the searches around the main theme of masculinity were conducted in May 2022 in three databases, and the search around the main theme of school and the workplace was conducted in June 2022 in three databases. A detailed description of the searches as well as all search strategies can be found in the Appendix.

Librarians Alena Lindfors and Ulrika Gabrielsson at Dalarna University developed the search strategy on mental ill-health among young men in the Nordic countries in consultation with the researcher. They then conducted the literature searches in various international databases and purged any duplicates from the search results. This Appendix describes the literature search strategy in more detail.

The librarians at Dalarna University, in consultation with the researcher, developed the search strategy based on the project description and the three questions in focus. Due to the large number of results that the test searches gave, it was decided to split the search into three sub-searches and search for each sub-question separately. Thus it ended up being one search for the area ‘young men’s mental ill-health in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, one for young men’s mental ill-health in connection with notions and norms of masculinity and norms, and one search for young men’s mental ill-health in connection with school and the workplace.

The searches were divided into three basic search blocks: one for mental health, one for young men, and one for the Nordic countries. The search block for mental health was a modification of the search strategy used by the Public Health Agency of Sweden in its snapshot report Is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the mental health of the population? (Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2020). All searches were limited to the publication years 2018–2020.

An additional specifically adapted search block was added to each sub-search. The sub-search on mental ill-health among young men in the Nordic countries in connection with the pandemic also contained a search block for the COVID-19 virus. The sub-search on mental ill-health among young men in the Nordic countries in connection with notions and norms of masculinity also contained a search block for masculinity, and the sub-search for school and the workplace contains a search block for school and the workplace.

All search blocks consisted of subject headings in the databases that use subject headings, and free text, partially truncated, that should be found in the title, abstract or keyword fields. The individual search terms in the search blocks were combined with the Boolean operator OR, and the search blocks in turn were combined with the Boolean operator AND so that at least one term from each search block was included in the results.

The literature searches were conducted in the English-language databases Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo (ProQuest) and Web of Science, and the partial search concerning the pandemic was also conducted in the Coronavirus Research Database (ProQuest). Medline covers international literature in biomedicine and is produced by the United States’ National Library of Medicine. PsycInfo is produced by the American Psychological Association (APA) and is the largest database of scholarly literature in the fields of mental health and behavioural sciences. The search block on mental health was omitted from the PsycInfo database search due to the database’s focus. Web of Science is an interdisciplinary database owned and produced by the company Clarivate. The Coronavirus Research Database brings together openly accessible research on the coronavirus. In the Coronavirus Research Database, the COVID-19 virus search block was omitted due to the database’s orientation, and the search strategy was simplified due to the database’s performance limitations. The simplification consisted of a search with the field code noft, which means “anywhere except full text”, instead of with the field codes for title, abstract and subject heading.

The search strategies were developed in the Medline database. The results were reviewed by researchers and librarians and then translated for the other databases. Librarians reviewed each other’s search strategies using the Guideline Checklist (McGowan et al., 2016) of Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS) 2015 to assure the quality of the search strategies. The checklist is divided into points concerning translation of the search query, the use of Boolean operators and proximity operators, the use of subject headings and free text, spelling, syntax, line numbering, and limitations and filters.

When completed, the search strategies were run by the librarians in the database. The sub-search concerning the pandemic was carried out on 24 March 2022, the sub-search concerning notions and norms of masculinity on 11 May 2022 and the sub-search concerning school and the workplace on 7 and 8 June 2022. The references were then loaded into the reference management program EndNote. A separate EndNote library was created for each sub-search. Finally, the librarians purged the references of duplicates according to the Bramer method for deduplication (Bramer et al., 2016).

Bramer, W. M., Giustini, D., de Jonge, G. B., Holland, L., & Bekhuis, T. (2016). De-duplication of database search results for systematic reviews in EndNote. J Med Libr Assoc, 104(3), 240-243. https://doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.104.3.014

Folkhälsomyndigheten. (2020). Påverkar covid-19-pandemin befolkningens psykiska hälsa? En snabb systematisk Forskningsöversikt (”rapid review”) Version 1.0. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publikationer-och-material/publikationsarkiv/p/paverkar-covid-19-pandemin-befolkningens-psykiska-halsa/?pub=78907

McGowan, J., Sampson, M., Salzwedel, D. M., Cogo, E., Foerster, V., & Lefebvre, C. (2016). PRESS Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies: 2015 Guideline Statement. J Clin Epidemiol, 75, 40-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2016.01.021