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Online Socio-emotional Dyad Training for Healthcare Students' Well-being and Social Skills
Condition(s) studied
Intervention ConditionControl (Delayed Training) Condition
Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)
Experimental: Empathy- and compassion-based socio-emotional mental training (EmCo)Waitlist Control Group (WCG)
Experimental: Empathy- and compassion-based socio-emotional mental training (EmCo): 1. Participants engage in a structured 13-minute partner-based contemplative exercise. Each dyad reflects on two experiences from the previous 24 hours: one involving a difficult emotion and one involving gratitude. Partners take turns speaking while the other listens non-judgmentally. During weeks 1-4, the practice emphasizes empathic listening; during weeks 5-8, compassionate listening. Participants are instructed to attend to bodily sensations associated with the emotions described. The practice aims to improve coping with difficult emotions, empathic and compassionate listening, (self)acceptance, compassion, gratitude, resilience.
2. Participants also attend eight 1.5-hour online group sessions led by Expert Dyad teachers. The coaching sessions help deepen the Dyad practice and educate teachers about body language, coping better with difficult emotions/stress, the benefits of empathy versus compassion and the act of listening from a mindset of empathy versus compassion.
Waitlist Control Group (WCG): Participants in the control group will not receive the intervention. They will complete pre- and post-test procedures consisting primarily of self-report questionnaires, and behavioral tasks, as well as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) conducted on four days within two weeks at pre-test and post-test 1 \& 2.
Study summary
In this Edu:Social Health Care project, a randomized controlled trial with a socio-emotional intervention and a waitlist control group will be conducted to evaluate the effects of a partner-based empathy-compassion Dyad mental training (EmCo) intervention on healthcare students with regard to the following primary outcome domains: 1) mental health, 2) resilience, 3) social cohesion and support, 4) social skills, 5) coping and emotion regulation, and 6) social behaviors.
One main goal is to examine the effects of such adapted 8-week EmCo Dyad intervention within the health care context, with a particular focus on strengthening students' mental health, resilience, social skills and behaviors, and social cohesion as well as fostering interprofessional attitudes by pairing every week study partners across different healthcare disciplines with each other for practicing their daily Dyads (e.g., nursing students will practice daily via app with medical students).
A further aim is to validate the novel Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA) task, which explores the use of app-based voice recordings as indicators of students' emotional states during their daily partner-based Dyad practice. By combining students' self-reported practice-related emotions with partner-based evaluations, this approach aims to generate new and innovate, more objective markers of training-induced changes in emotional processing and regulation over time in a real-live applied setting.
The final aim is to investigate the cognitive and affective mechanisms and factors underlying observed changes in students' mental health, resilience, social cohesion, social skills and social behaviors, that may explain observed training-related effects in primary outcome domains. Based on previous research, we expect the socio-emotional EmCo Dyad training to activate evolutionary old care- and affiliation-based motivational systems that foster positive affect and motivation, acceptance, trust social capacities and behavioral tendencies. These processes should go along with reduction in loneliness, stress and other mental vulnerabilities (anxiety, depression, burn-out etc.) and foster social skills such as empathy, compassion as well as social cohesion and resilience.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria:
1. Between 18- and 65-years old.
2. actively enrolled student at the PMU.
3. Proficient in German.
4. Informed consent.
5. No symptoms of psychiatric disease within the past two years.
6. Stable internet access and necessary technical equipment (computer or laptop or tablet, and mobile phone with internet access).
7. No regular contemplative practice (≤ 50 hours total within the past six months); healthy population, non-clinical population.
Exclusion Criteria:
8. Insufficient German proficiency.
9. Lack of stable internet access or required devices (computer or laptop or tablet, and mobile phone with internet access).
10. No informed consent.
11. Not actively enrolled at PMU.
12. Regular contemplative practice (\> 50 hours in the past six months (e.g., dyad, mindfulness, compassion-based practices).
13. Current psychiatric diagnosis or therapy, or reaching screening cutoffs on:
* Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9; Martin et al., 2006; Löwe et al., 2004; Cutoff ≥ 10),
* Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7; Löwe et al., 2007; Spitzer et al., 2006; Cutoff ≥ 10),
* Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20; Bagby et al., 1994; Ritz \& Kannapin, 2000; Cutoff ≥ 61)
* Standardized Assessment of Personality - Abbreviated Scale (SAPAS; Moran et al., 2003; Söchtig et al., 2012, Cutoff ≥ 4).
* Moreover, participants endorsing suicidality on the PHQ-9 will be excluded.
Primary outcome measure(s)
- Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring depression, anxiety, and stress (Henry \& Crawford, 2005; Nilges \& Essau, 2021). Higher scores indicate more depression, anxiety, and stress.
- Maslach Burnout Inventory-Students Survey (MBI-SS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring burnout (Gumz et al., 2013; Maslach \& Jackson, 1981). Higher scores indicate more burnout.
- UCLA Loneliness Scale (UCLA) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring loneliness severity (Döring \& Bortz, 1993; Russell et al., 1980). Higher scores indicate more loneliness.
- Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring psychological resilience (Connor \& Davidson, 2003; Sarubin et al., 2015). Higher scores indicate more resilience.
- Social closeness (IOS per profession) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring the felt closeness between persons or groups/communities using a visual representation (Aron et al., 1992; Kinnunen \& Windmann, 2013). Higher score indicates more social closeness.
- Interprofessionalism Scale (IPAS-D) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale (Norris et al., 2015; Pedersen et al., 2020) measuring attitudes that relate to the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPEC Report, 2011). Higher scores indicate more positive attitudes toward collaborative practice.
- Social Support Scale (F-SozU K-6) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring the subjective feeling of having support available (Kliem et al., 2015). Higher scores indicate greater perceived social support.
- Socio-Affective Video Task (SoVT) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
This task assesses behavioral empathy and compassion using emotional video clips (Klimecki et al., 2014). Higher scores indicate more empathy or more compassion.
- Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scale for Self and Others (SOCS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring self-compassion (SOCS-S) and compassion for others (SOCS-O; Gu et al., 2020). Higher scores indicate more compassion.
- Mentalization Scale (MENTS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2).
A scale measuring the capacity of envisioning one's and others' behaviors with reference to the underlying mental states (Dimitrijević et al., 2018). Higher scores suggesting a more sophisticated capacity for mentalizing.
- Prosodic Features of Vocalized Emotional Expressions — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Acoustic assessment of prosodic speech features during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software. The following parameters will be assessed: pitch (Hz), loudness (unitless), speaking rate (syllables per second), and intonation (unitless).
- Affect Dimensions of Vocalized Emotional Expressions — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Assessment of continuous affective dimensions of vocalized emotional expressions during participants' daily Dyad practice using audEERING devAIce software. The following parameters will be assessed: arousal, valence, and dominance (each ranging from -1 to 1). Based on arousal-valence scores, the following affect quadrant values will be calculated: high-arousal-high-valence, low-arousal-high-valence, low-arousal-low-valence, and high-arousal-low-valence.
- Affect Categories of Vocalized Emotional Expressions — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Classification of vocalized emotional expressions into affect categories during participants' daily Dyad practice using audEERING devAIce software. The following categories will be assessed: angry, happy, and sad, expressed as unitless values ranging from 0 to 1 representing category likelihood.
- Stress intensity — Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
Custom items based on the Stress Appraisal Measure (SAM; Delahaye et al., 2015; Peacock \& Wong, 1990) measuring stress intensity. Higher scores indicate more intense stress.
- Coping strategies — Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
Custom items based on the Brief-COPE (Carver, 1997; Knoll et al., 2005) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ; Garnefski et al., 2001; Loch et al., 2011) measuring Coping Strategies (Acceptance, Positive Reinterpretation, Social Support, Rumination, Self-Blame, Distraction). Higher scores indicate a higher use of the specified coping strategies.
- Active Empathic Listening Scale (AELS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
A scale measuring active empathic listening (Bodie, 2011). Higher scores indicate more active empathic listening.
- Attachment behavior (ASQ) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
A self-report questionnaire measuring attachment-related behaviors in interpersonal relationships, including proximity seeking, avoidance, and security (Hexel, 2004). Higher scores indicate more pronounced attachment-related behaviors.
Trial sites (1)
| Facility | City | Region | Status |
|---|
| Social Neuroscience Lab, Max Planck Society |
Berlin |
Germany |
|
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