Title: Designing a Survey Instrument to Evaluate K-12 Educators Perception of Well-being
Authors: Trystan Innes, Amanda M.S. Frasier PhD, and Chad R. Frasier PhD
Introduction: For several years, the United States has faced an increasingly growing teacher shortage as measured by increased vacancies for certified positions 1–3. This shortage is caused by both a decreased enrollment in teacher preparation programs (reduction in those entering the profession) and greater numbers of staff turnover (increase in those leaving the profession) and schools in the South are disproportionately impacted 4.
The use of non-invasive measures of heart rate has recently gained an increase in attention, especially with the prevalence of watch-based measurements. These emerging technologies have increased the availability of these measures outside of clinical settings, but the utility of these measures has not been validated. A growing measure companies claim to use is heart rate variability (HRV), which closely approximates the output of the autonomic nervous system. Several studies have linked changes in HRV to mood 15–17, stress18–22, cardiovascular health23–25, and exercise performance and recovery 26–28. However, the utility of the wrist base measurements may be overstated, and expert consensus suggests the use of these devices may become disruptive to healthcare until more is known about how the data relates to a person's health and well-being (29.
Overall, there is a gap in research on teacher health and well-being that includes the use of objective measures 34.
Methods: A review of current literature for keywords such as occupational stress, teacher, well-being, health, and heart-rate variability. Surveys that addressed well-being were isolated from these studies. Surveys were evaluated on scoring system, question format, experimental group population and relevance to well-being. The findings were incorporated into a modified Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) survey. The finalized survey was uploaded into Qualtrics for dissemination.
The survey will be administered to K-12 educators at schools in northeast Tennessee. These schools will be comprised of both rural and city schools. Participants will also be from schools with variations in socioeconomic levels and population density.
Surveys will be scored in accordance with the guidelines established in the Teacher Stress Inventory. In addition, questions from the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) survey were included. Where there was a potential overlap in questions between the TSI and ERI, answers were coded for scaling according to ERI in addition to the TSI.
Results: Once the survey has been completed, participants who fit the inclusion criteria will be selected and fitted with an Equivital monitor to track their movement, breathing rate, and ECG over a 24-hour period. In addition, during the fitting of the device, participants will answer the WHO-5 questionnaire which will be used to longitudinally track well-being during the study. ECG data will be used to analyze heart rate variability (HRV) in addition to other ECG parameters. Survey scores and Equivital measures will then be investigated for potential correlation.
Conclusion: The survey constructed will serve the foundation in the future research project for evaluating the relationship between HRV and teacher perceptions of well-being.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:asrf-2214 |
| Date | 25 April 2023 |
| Creators | Innes, Trystan, Frasier, Chad |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Appalachian Student Research Forum |
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