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. 2025 Apr 8;15(4):487.
doi: 10.3390/bs15040487.

Content Moderator Mental Health and Associations with Coping Styles: Replication and Extension of Previous Studies

Ruth Spence  1 , Jeffrey DeMarco  1
Affiliations

Content Moderator Mental Health and Associations with Coping Styles: Replication and Extension of Previous Studies

Ruth Spence et al. Behav Sci (Basel). .

Abstract

There is an increasing evidence base that demonstrates the psychological toll of content moderation on the employees that perform this crucial task. Nevertheless, content moderators (CMs) can be based worldwide and have varying working conditions. Therefore, there is a need for studies to be replicated to ensure that the results are robust. The current study used a large sample of commercial CMs employed by an international company to replicate the results from two previous studies that relied on an anonymous online survey. The results pertaining to mental health, wellbeing, and the effectiveness of wellbeing services for this population were mostly replicated. Over a quarter of CMs demonstrated moderate to severe psychological distress, and a quarter were experiencing low wellbeing. Further, the results suggest the potential utility for interventions that increase problem-focussed problem solving, as well as a need for the efficacy of wellbeing services to be evaluated more broadly.

Keywords: content moderation; mental health; replication; trust and safety; wellbeing.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. There were no funders for this study; however, the final manuscript was approved by the company that took part in this research.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean scores on psychological distress, secondary trauma, and wellbeing by frequency of exposure.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean scores on psychological distress, secondary trauma, and wellbeing by wellbeing service use, concerns about confidentiality, and if services understand the pressure of the role.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Associations between psychological distress predicted values and different coping strategies.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Associations between secondary trauma predicted values and different coping strategies.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Associations between wellbeing predicted values and different coping strategies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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