Socio-Psychological Factors of Anxiety in Educational Institutions During a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, which entailed forced self-isolation, a change in the format of work and other epidemiological restrictions, led to a deterioration in the educator’s emotional state, and subsequently a decrease in the educational process effectiveness. This work is intended to fill a gap in the lack of empirical research on the pandemic impact on the anxiety indicators among employees of educational institutions and organizations. This study was conducted over several months among 76 teachers of higher educational institutions and schoolteachers in Russia. The Spielberg’s and J. Taylor’s methods were used, aimed at identifying the personal and situational anxiety level, as well as the anxiety manifestations severity. With the use factor analysis, the main causes groups of emerging anxiety were identified, which were later confirmed in the semi-structured interview course. Based on the empirical analysis, recommendations in the checklist format were developed. This study results, namely the leaflets with recommendations, may contribute to the further development of ways to prevent the increased anxiety state and its consequences, as well as methods for preventing the anxiety onset.

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