Katarzyna Zukowska*, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Martyna Kowalska, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Anna Pankiewicz, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Ewelina Smoktunowicz, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Roman Cieslak, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Track: Practice Presentation Topic: other Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2012-09-11

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Background. Professionals working with traumatized clients are at risk of developing job burnout and secondary traumatic stress. These negative outcomes may be prevented through psychological intervention. According to Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1997), self-efficacy beliefs play an important role in coping with trauma and its effects. Another resource facilitating effective coping with indirect trauma and work stress is social support, which directly improves health and buffers negative effects of work-related demands on health. Additionally, the enabling hypothesis (Schwarzer & Knoll, 2007) claims that perceived social support facilitates self-efficacy. Our prior longitudinal study among social workers and first responders (Zukowska & Cieslak, 2011; Smoktunowicz & Cieslak, 2011) confirmed that self-efficacy mediates the effect of perceived social support on secondary traumatic stress and on posttraumatic growth. Also, the study showed that self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between perceived social support and job burnout as well as the social support—work engagement relationship.
Based on these results we developed “The Helpers’ Stress” - an online psychological intervention to help first responders and social workers in effective coping with secondary trauma and to assist them in mobilizing individual and social resources. The intervention consists of three modules: 1) educational materials presenting knowledge about coping with secondary trauma and work stress, 2) interactive cognitive and behavioral activities focusing on social support enhancement, 3) interactive cognitive and behavioral activities aimed to increase self-efficacy beliefs.
Objectives. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of these web-based interventions.
Methods. Participants (N = 300) were recruited from professionals working with traumatized clients. They are randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) educational intervention, 2) social support enhancement intervention, 2) self-efficacy enhancement intervention. The following variables are used to assess effectiveness of interventions: perceived social support, work-stress and burnout management self-efficacy, secondary trauma self-efficacy, job burnout, secondary traumatic stress. Participants complete the survey before the intervention (Time 1), immediately after it (Time 2), and 4 weeks after completing Time 2 assessment (Time 3).
Results. Study is in progress. Repeated measures analysis of variance will be applied to analyze data.