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. 2024 May 15;10(10):e31327.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e31327. eCollection 2024 May 30.

Work engagement and sense of coherence as predictors of psychological distress during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile

Juan Gómez-Salgado  1   2 , Diemen Delgado-García  3   4 , Mónica Ortega-Moreno  5 , Javier Fagundo-Rivera  6 , Luis El Khoury-Moreno  7 , Ángel Vilches-Arenas  8   9 , Carlos Ruiz-Frutos  1   2
Affiliations

Work engagement and sense of coherence as predictors of psychological distress during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile

Juan Gómez-Salgado et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between sense of coherence, work engagement, and work environment variables as predictors of the level of psychological distress during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile.

Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study collected between April 22 and December 16, 2020, using non-probabilistic snowball sampling. The study variables and instruments were socio-demographic variables, work engagement (UWES-9 scale), sense of coherence (Antonovsky SOC-13 scale), and psychological distress (GHQ-12 scale). Multivariate analysis and binary logistic regression were performed including the scores of the three questionnaires and other variables such as effectiveness, safety, stress, health perception, and sex. Finally, the CHAID technique was applied to create a segmentation tree.

Results: 72.7 % of participants had high levels of psychological distress, more predominantly among women, with work stress and low sense of coherence acting as the most influential mediators in generating psychological distress, and even more so when both were combined. Low work engagement and the availability of safe and effective means to prevent infection were predictors of psychological distress among workers.

Conclusion: During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, factors that contributed to psychological distress in the Chilean population were identified. These included a fair or poor perception of health, being a woman, work-related stress, availability of safety measures, low level of work engagement, and low level of sense of coherence. Identifying these factors may help prevent similar effects in future phases of the current pandemic or in future pandemics.

Keywords: COVID-19; Chile; Psychological distress; Sense of coherence; Work engagement; Work environment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: The author Juan Gómez-Salgado, PhD, is an Associate Editor of the Public Health section of this journal (Heliyon). If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Segmentation tree for psychological distress.
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