Association of COVID-19 Pandemic with Undergraduate Medical Students’ Perceived Stress and Coping [Response to Letter]

Dear editor

This is in response to the letter by Jie and Muhammad. We appreciate the interest in our article particularizing the Association of COVID-19 Pandemic with undergraduate Medical Students’ Perceived Stress and Coping,¹ and your comments. Our primary goal was to delineate an approach used by the medical students in terms of their coping strategies adopted to tackle the stress ascending from the current pandemic situation. In our college, the male-female ratio contrasts;² additionally, our investigation essentially required volunteer participation.¹ which leads us to a natural but unequal number of participants (ie male and female). Moreover, as a well-recognised practice in contemporary research, our results were presented as the percentage of partcipants, not their numbers. Therefore, there does not remain any issue of partiality.

Moreover, it was also stated that we might have included other modern recreational activities. We think that adding up more such options would somewhat lengthen the survey without adding up any more robustness to the study. It shall also be noted that we used “exercise” in general without “detailing it” (what type), and we let our respondents determine and relate it for whatever they are doing (aerobics, gymnastics, free weight, strength exercise, etc.).

However, an important point was raised about clarifying the terms used, and we thank and intend to be observant and shall apply in any of our future research.