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May 23, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi

New Study Looks At Effectiveness Of Resiliency Intervention During The Pandemic Lockdown

May 23, 2023 08:00 by Patricia Tomasi  [About the Author]

A new study published in PLOS ONE looked at the effectiveness of a brief online resilience intervention during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“Our study aimed to test a new positive psychological intervention, SPARK Resilience® @Work,” study author Evgeny Osin told us. “It is a programme that aims to help employees understand, activate, and develop the psychological resources and strategies that are important to deal efficiently with stressful situations and to maintain high well-being and high performance at work.” 

There are several versions of SPARK Resilience training programme based on ideas and interventions of cognitive-behavioral therapy and positive psychology. However, previous versions of the programme were addressed to adolescents and were only tested in a school context. The present study aimed to test a version of the SPARK programme for employees.

There are numerous existing studies of resilience interventions, many of which are based on the well-known ideas of CBT. Meta-analytic reviews show that these interventions are effective against a wide range of outcomes and that their effects are stronger in adult samples and in at-risk populations. However, meta-analytic studies also show that distance-based interventions generally tend to show weaker effects. 

“We had an expectation that the programme would be effective, but we had no idea how strong the effects would be and how they would vary across the different outcome variables,” Osin told us. “In positive psychology, we aim to only offer evidence-based interventions, and we need to have a good awareness of their strengths and limitations, and the way their effects differ across contexts. This is why we keep researching and evaluating the outcomes.” 

The SPARK Resilience programme was developed for educational settings by professor Ilona Boniwell in 2009-2010. The idea to develop and offer a similar program for organizations has been around for years, and this study was a pilot trial of the programme organized by Professor Boniwell and her team at Positran, a French boutique consultancy offering training, tools, and advice based on positive psychology to organizations and individuals.

The pilot of the program coincided with the Covid pandemic and the first weeks of a country-wide lockdown in France. Because of this, the program was organized as eight 90-minute sessions taking place twice a week over one month and carried out using Zoom. At each session, participants received a little bit of theory, tried several interventions working in small groups, and completed a mindfulness exercise. The trial included over 400 participants and included two groups, an intervention and a control group, comprised by employed adult volunteers who expressed a desire to take part in the pilot study. 

“The participants were proposed to complete a set of psychological questionnaires during the week before and the week after the intervention month,” Osin told us. "Because of the pandemic context, we deemed it would not be ethical to use a placebo control, and we used a wait-list control instead: the control group was scheduled to complete the same training later.”

The research team found that participants who completed the intervention reported an increase in positive affect, resilience, meaning, as well as a decrease in perceived stress. The magnitude of these effects was well above the minimum effect for practical significance, indicating that the changes are quite tangible, supporting the effectiveness of the SPARK Resilience @Work program. 

“We also discovered a decrease of negative affect and an increase in work engagement, but these statistically significant effects were weaker,” Osin told us. “It is not surprising, given the upheaval in all work practices that was taking place during the first weeks of the lockdown, when most participants had to switch to working from home for the first time in their lives.” 

The team also collected qualitative data about the effects of the programme, with participants reporting more solution focus, a better understanding of their emotional reactions, and better relationships, among other outcomes.

“The quantitative results of the pilot were in line with our expectations,” Osin told us. "Perhaps the most surprising fact with a very high demand for the program as well as high level of adherence and satisfaction with the program, indicating that resilience interventions such as ours are particularly relevant and important during unexpected major stresses, such as the first lockdown. In line with prior studies, we discovered that the positive effects of the program were stronger for older adults, whose Covid-related risks were higher.” 

The results suggest that online interventions including interaction with the trainers and among participants can be no less effective in developing resilience and improving well-being than the interventions in a traditional face-to-face format. The obvious advantage is their scalability: It is hardly possible to lead a psychological group with over 25-30 participants, whereas on Zoom, the trainers could facilitate groups of up to 300 participants at the same time. 

"This allows us to deliver psychological support, knowledge, and skills to a larger number of persons who need them to remain resilient during hard times,” Osin told us.

 

About the Author

Patricia Tomasi

Patricia Tomasi is a mom, maternal mental health advocate, journalist, and speaker. She writes regularly for the Huffington Post Canada, focusing primarily on maternal mental health after suffering from severe postpartum anxiety twice. You can find her Huffington Post biography here. Patricia is also a Patient Expert Advisor for the North American-based, Maternal Mental Health Research Collective and is the founder of the online peer support group - Facebook Postpartum Depression & Anxiety Support Group - with over 1500 members worldwide. Blog: www.patriciatomasiblog.wordpress.com
Email: tomasi.patricia@gmail.com


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