Lack of samples from rural, central, western, and ethnic minority regions of China to examine the model's cross-cultural applicability

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the limitations section and limitations and future-work section of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2024 and 2026, spanning 4 journals. Those papers have been cited 20 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Examining Associations Between Individual Exercise, Parent–Child Exercise, and Children’s Mental Health: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach (2025) · Behavioral Sciences · cited 3× · doi

  lack of samples from rural, central, western, and ethnic minority regions of China to examine the model's cross-cultural applicability - self-reported data susceptible to social desirability bias - lack of parental or teacher reports or objective measures - cross-sectional design, which can only identify correlations between variables and not establish causality or track changes over time

  generallimitations section
  Keywords: lack samples rural central western ethnic minority regions
• Association between shyness and depression among Chinese adolescents: the roles of social network site use and engagement in online games (2026) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi

  Although the results of present study provided some new understandings of the association between shyness and depression and its mechanisms, several limitations existed. Firstly, self- reported survey was used, which may be influenced by common method bias. In order to solve it, the reported data from parents, teachers and classmates should be surveyed. Second, cross- sectional design was used, which made it hard to make a causal inference. Therefore, longitudinal and experimental design should be conducted to verify the results of present study. Thirdly, all the participants were Chinese students, which made it difficult to generalize the findings to other countries influenced by cultural differences. Thus, the results of present study should be verified with other country samples. Finally, due to the participants were selected from 4 schools in 3 cities in eastern China to complete a questionnaire survey, the the clustering of participants within schools/cities has not been modeled with the present study, and future study should solve this limitation.

  generallimitationsevidence 5/5
  Keywords: present participants reported survey used uenced solve design made schools cities provided understandings association shyness
• The mediating role of social connectedness and negative cognitive emotion regulation in the association between problematic Internet use and depression among adolescents (2024) · Frontiers in Public Health · cited 11× · doi

  The generalizability of the study's findings to other populations may be limited due to cultural factors. The study was conducted in China and may not be representative of other countries or regions. The study used a cross-sectional design, which may not be able to establish causality between variables. The study relied on self-reported measures, which may be subject to biases and limitations.

  generallimitations sectionevidence 5/5
  Keywords: generalizability study findings other populations limited due cultural
• The Relationship Between Social Anxiety and Depression Among Rural High School Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Social Comparison and Social Support (2025) · Healthcare · cited 6× · doi

  future research could further explore the mechanisms underlying the role of social comparison as a common variable in cross-cultural research - future research could further explore the mechanisms underlying the different types of social support - future research could employ cross-regional random sampling to survey lower-grade students from rural high schools of varying sizes, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of the issues surrounding depression - future investigations might consider adopting experimental approaches to more thoroughly explore the relationship between social anxiety and depression - subsequent research could prioritize longitudinal designs to provide causal evidence for the parallel mediation model - future research could consider utilizing a latent structural equation model to correct measurement error and enhance the robustness of the findings - further investigation is needed into other mediating factors influencing social anxiety and…

  generalfuture-work sectionevidence 5/5
  Keywords: future research further explore mechanisms underlying role social

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