No abstract

The research Ethics committee of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (ELTE) granted a central permission (permission nr: 2019/47). Many other labs obtained IRB approval too, which approvals can be found here: https://osf.io/j6kte/ . Participants had to give informed consent before starting the experiment. Only participants recruited through Mturk or Prolific received monetary compensation.Note that full information on the approval of the study protocol must also be provided in the manuscript.

Objectives: This cross-sectional online study examined the role of socio-demographic and psychological characteristics in predicting anxiety, stress, and concern of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in older adults during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia. Methods: Six hundred and seven older adults (Sample 1) and 156 older adults (Sample 2) participated in the study during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. The older adults completed a battery of validated instruments for anxiety, stress, concern of COVID-19 infection (outcome variables), satisfaction with health, perceived danger of COVID-19, loneliness, intolerance of uncertainty (IU), optimism, powerlessness, and coping self-efficacy (predictor variables). The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Results: The older adults in both samples experienced moderate levels of anxiety, stress, and concern of COVID-19 infection. The greatest amount of variability in anxiety and stress was explained by powerlessness, IU, optimism, and coping self-efficacy. Concern of COVID-19 infection was best predicted by the perceived danger of COVID-19. Conclusion: The findings contribute to the existing knowledge about the mental health of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the role of the psychological predictors of anxiety, stress, and concern of COVID-19 infection during both waves.

Background: Stress and burnout are among the common causes of absenteeism and fluctuation of staff in European workplaces. Therefore, the demand for understanding the predictors of burnout in high risk professions has been growing. The aim of this study is to explore the link between perceived stress and the three dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment) while considering the potential mediating role of self-care and job satisfaction that may prevent the transformation of stress into burnout. Methods: A randomly selected group of Slovak social service professionals (N = 689; 618 women) from institutions in 8 districts in Slovakia described their levels of perceived stress, burnout, performed self-care and job satisfaction in self-reported questionnaires. Results: The relationship between stress and emotional exhaustion is solely mediated by certain aspects of job satisfaction: salary, nature of work, and operating procedures. The relationship between stress and depersonalization is mediated by the nature of work, psychological self-care, and professional self-care. However, professional self-care does not prevent but rather facilitates the development of depersonalization in times of high perceived stress. The relationship between stress and personal accomplishment is mediated by psychological and professional self-care as well as by three factors of job satisfaction: co-workers, nature of work and job benefits. When stress increases, satisfaction with co-workers and nature of work prevent the decrease of personal accomplishment. However, job benefits, with increasing stress, may be related to a decrease in personal accomplishment at work. Conclusion: Satisfaction with salary, nature of work, operating procedures and co-workers as well as psychological self-care may prevent the further development of burnout in times of high stress. Yet, professional self-care and job benefits may, in times of increased stress, potentially lead towards specific aspects of burnout (depersonalization and reduction of personal accomplishment).

The study is aimed at the clarification of the role of perceived stress in the process of developing burnout which belongs with the major research challenges in helping professions (Lloyd, King & Chenoweth, 2002). Research sample consisted of students of helping professions who completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory for students (MBI-SS) and Perceived Stress Scale and Emotional Habitual Subjective Well-being Scale. It was hypothesized that higher level of perceived stress would be linked with higher level of burnout. Burnout was expected to be correlated with frequent experiencing of negative emotions and less often experiencing of positive emotions. The side objective of the research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the MBI SS, which was translated from the original English version by Schaufeli et al. (2002). The interpretation of other results is discussed in the paper.