Health-promoting resources and social study factors among students with and without foreign backgrounds in nursing and social work programs at six Swedish universities.

The first-semester and final-semester groups were mostly different people, so the study cannot show that individual students changed. The authors note that students who reported low values first time round may have dropped out or simply not answered later. Only 42 students with foreign backgrounds answered in the final semester, and only 296 of the 1,854 invited students answered at that point. No power calculation was done. No dropout analysis was carried out, so it is unclear whether students left their programme or chose not to answer the survey. The questionnaire was in Swedish, which the authors say may have been a barrier for students whose first language was not Swedish. The results can only be generalised to nursing and social work students at the six universities studied, not to students elsewhere or to other programmes. Data collection ran through the COVID-19 pandemic and the design included no way of measuring the pandemic's effect on the results, which the authors call a validity limitation.

The research received funding to cover project management costs from the Swedish Framework for Health Research in Collaboration. The first author is employed as a doctoral student at Halmstad University, and all authors receive regular research support from their respective universities. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Do not read the closing gap as students catching up over their programme. The first-semester and final-semester respondents were mostly different people, and the students who scored lowest first time round may simply not have answered later. The authors carried out no dropout analysis.