Which teachers were most affected in terms of mental health during the strict COVID-19 lockdown in Spain?

ABSTRACT

This study looks at the effect that the compulsory COVID-19 lockdown restrictions introduced by the Spanish government had on the quality of life of teachers working in the Spanish education system, i.e. those teaching at early years, primary, secondary, tertiary vocational training and university education levels. Participants completed a questionnaire that included the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) along with other questions relating to their wellbeing from the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS). A total of 668 teachers responded to the questionnaire, which was generated using Microsoft Forms and distributed in an online format. The results confirm significant levels of abnormal anxiety during prolonged lockdown. We perform a multivariate analysis that shows that, whatever the level of anxiety, two variables are always significant in all the contrast models: participants felt the effects of lockdown on a personal level and found it difficult to carry out their work. The results also indicate that teachers working in primary and secondary education were those most affected by the strict, prolonged lockdown and that female teachers suffered much higher levels of anxiety than male teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• COVID-19
• lockdown
• global health
• sleep disorder
• teachers

Acknowledgments

We thank the teachers who participated voluntarily in the study and Peter Hall for editing the text in English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Institutional review board statement

The study’s protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the University of Alcalá. Project number: CEI/HU/2020/32. In accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, written informed consent was obtained from each teacher before inclusion. This study is part of the following research projects: Teachers’ and students’ quality of life in times of confinement (COVID-19) and The Social Dimension from an Accounting and Legal Perspective.

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Notes

1. Teaching category.

Early years/pre-school: From three to six years old

Primary school: From six to twelve years old

Secondary school: From twelve to sixteen years old

Tertiary vocational training: From fifteen years old

University: From eighteen years old

2. Number of teachers in a Spanish academic year 2018–2019.

3. It gives us a 99% confidence interval with a 5% margin of error.

4. The McDonald’s omega coefficient is used because Cronbach’s alpha can underestimate the magnitude of internal consistency when: first, the measurement model is not tau equivalent, furthermore, when the response scale is ordinal and, in addition, there are five response alternatives or less. In these situations, some authors recommend opting for McDonald’s omega (Peters, 2014).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Comunidad de Madrid [CM/JIN/2019-044]; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [CCG19/CCJJ-042]; Universidad de Alcalá [UAH/EV1090].