Teaching during the Pandemic: A Comparison in Psychological Wellbeing among Smart Working Professions

Abstract

Background: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, since March 2020, the Italian population was forced into lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. The restrictive measures imposed forced many organizations and workers to work through online platforms and no longer in-person. Smart working, enjoyed by some workers for its flexibility, affected several professional categories. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there are differences in the psychological variables related to four groups of professional categories (practitioners, managers, executive employees, teachers), particularly the teachers group. Methods: A total sample of 628 individuals was recruited through a random probability sample across Italy. Due to the lockdown, an online questionnaire was developed; several validated scales were chosen, and some ad hoc constructed items related to the smart working experience were included. Results: The results showed statistically significant differences between the four groups of examined smart workers. Conclusions: All workers have had to readjust to this new way of working, but our results show that teachers were the most affected, both in the perception of their psychological well-being and in the management of the smart working mode.

“Stay at Home” in Italy during the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Longitudinal Study on Individual Well-Being among Different Age Groups

“…The general trends of the PSS scores throughout the study in all the different sessions seem to be explained by the model of the general adaptation syndrome [26]. Everything life-threatening may result in both stress and adaptive responses, making adaptability and resilience fundamental for facing stressful situations, in different life contexts [26,70].…”

Trends in Coffee and Tea Consumption during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Moreover, caffeine improves concentration and attention by eliminating distractors and improving focus, which is the reason why it has the potential to improve vigilance and reaction time [8]. Yet, in pandemic settings, this feature may be read as a driver of increased tea consumption, driven by higher levels of stress and confusion induced by the epidemic situation and the dissemination of home-based smart working [32].…”

Mistrust and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Differently Mediate the Effects of Psychological Factors on Propensity for COVID-19 Vaccine

“…To this aim, we administered an online battery of questionnaires to a general sample of the Italian population. In this battery, we collected data about sociodemographic information that were relevant for vaccination behavior or psychological well-being, i.e., sex (Malik et al, 2020), education (Lazarus et al, 2020), religious beliefs, familiar, and economic status (Murphy et al, 2021), working condition, i.e., if in smart working (Mari et al, 2021) or in the healthcare system (Simione and Gnagnarella, 2020), and history of a diagnosed psychological condition or medical condition relevant for COVID-19 severity (Sherman et al, 2020). We also measured psychological symptoms that were credited to be relevant in the context of COVID-19, vaccination, and mistrust/conspiracy beliefs, i.e., anxiety and depression (Kar et al, 2021), death and disease anxiety (Simione and Gnagnarella, 2020), somatization (Shigemura et al, 2020), anger (Trnka and Lorencova, 2020), paranoid ideation (Lopes et al, 2020), and psychotic symptoms (Hajdúk et al, 2020;D ′ Agostino et al, 2021).…”