The Self-Care Strategies Questionnaire
was developed by a team of the Latvian researchers in 2021.
Studies based on the Questionnaire
Ozola, A., & Mārtinsone, K. (2022).
Specifics of art therapists’ self-care strategies.
Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, I, 828-845.
Self-care refers to taking the action to preserve or improve one’s own health and well-being, in particular during periods of stress. Self-care activities may differ in terms of their importance and attainability. With the increased hazards to the health and well-being of professionals in the helping professions as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, self-care is one of the resources available to strengthen mental health and promote psychological resilience.
The aim of the study was to explore arts therapists’ self-care strategies and their specifics compared with those of other psychological help providers and functional specialists.
The results of the study revealed that arts therapists value self-care as important and practice a high proportion of self-care activities and strategies. However, arts therapists’ self-care practices only partially correspond to their self-assessed importance as most activities are practiced much less frequently. In all of strategies importance was scored significantly higher compared with attainability. Six out of 14 self-care strategies revealed statistically significant differences between arts therapists’ and other functional specialists’ self-care strategies. There was no significant difference indicated between arts therapists’ and psychological help providers’ self-care strategies.
In general, arts therapists’ self-care strategies share more similarities with other psychological help providers than with other functional specialists. The study provides a perspective for further research on self-care in the helping professions including self-care among arts therapists.
Liepiņa, E., & Mārtinsone, K. (2022).
Teachers’ self-care strategies and supervision as a self-care activity for teachers.
Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, I, 426-441.
Self-care is a very important topic in the daily life of teachers, as the teachers’ role is constantly changing, exposed to constant stress and the risk of burnout.
The aim of this study was to investigate teachers' self-care strategies and experts’ views on actualization of self-care strategies and supervision as a self-care activity within supervision.
The results revealed that there are statistically significant differences between what teachers’ value as important and what they do in terms of self-care. The importance of all self-care strategies is rated higher than attainability.
Self-care strategy receiving psychological and professional support, which also includes supervision, has showed the lowest rating in terms of both importance and attainability according to the teachers. However, to overcome various psychological and professional challenges, receiving psychological and professional support is essential and can be obtained through supervision, which allows a broader view of a specific situation, helps to reduce the risks of burnout, promotes self-reflection and professional development.
This study shows that educators lack psychological and professional support, and there is a need to consider how to promote supervision as a form of support for educators. Supervision is one of the opportunities where teachers can get psychological and professional support.
Lāce, D., & Mārtinsone, K. (2022).
The self-assessment of supervisors’ self-care strategies.
Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, I, 807-818.
Self-care as a resource was known even before the pandemic, however right now the self-care activities have been actualized for people to be able to improve self-awareness in both personal and professional life. It forces the society and employers to search for other solutions to provide support for employees.
One of the possibilities to get support and practice self-care is supervision. Moreover, it is important to find out how supervisors themselves assess self-care strategies. The aim of this study was to explore the self-assessment of Latvian supervisors' self-care strategies.
The results showed statistically significant differences between the self-assessment of importance and attainability in all strategies. The importance was rated higher than attainability. Planning of time, balance of personal and professional life, being alone and in silence, professional development, reading were the self-care strategies more often assessed higher and more often carried out by supervisors.
This research showed that supervisors as professionals who purposefully organize and provide support to their clients and professionals in various fields must acknowledge the self-care activities in their own lives, learn to knowingly practice them and when necessary to teach self-care activities to their clients.
Mārtinsone, A., Perepjolkina, V., & Ruža, A. (2022).
Development and validation of the Self_Care Strategy Survey in the Latvian adult sample.
Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, II, 38-54. https://doi.org/10.17770/sie2022vol2.6833
Restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are known not only to affect communication but also to threaten people's physical and mental health. Self-care is an important method for reducing these threats, especially for those, who help others, such as doctors, psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, etc.
The aim of this study was to develop a multidimensional Self-Care Strategies Questionnaire, which is intended for a sample of workers, focusing primarily on psychological care providers.
The questionnaire consists of two parts. In the first part, participants were asked to rate how each activity (self-care strategy) contributes to his/her health and well-being in personal and / or professional life (from 1 = does not help at all to 4 = helps a lot) and in the second part, they were asked to rate the same activities, indicating, how much time they have devoted to the named activity in the last month (from 1 = don't spend any time / never, to 4 = spend as much time as needed / very often / regularly).
The questionnaire was developed in three stages. Finally, based on the series of sequential Explanatory Factor Analysis the best performing 63 items were selected and a 14-scale structure of the questionnaire were obtained. All items have acceptable psychometric properties and all scales are internally consistent.
The developed questionnaire can be a useful tool for exploring and evaluating self-care strategies and can be used for both research and psychological assessment purposes, as well as for self-assessment and self-monitoring purposes.
Ozola, A., Roslova, Z., Duhovska, J., & Mārtinsone, K. (2023).
Development of an intervention to promote self-care: Needs assessment. Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, I, 537-549.
The global societal challenges reveal decreased ability of people to maintain health and well-being when faced with prolonged stress conditions. Increases in anxiety, depression, and burnout are reported worldwide. The recent research indicates self-care as a useful resource to promote health and well-being and strengthen psychological resilience. The importance and attainability of self-care strategies are the characteristics that may indicate the necessity for self-care behaviour changes by identifying an internal conflict between the two. However, little is known about the determinants of self-care practicing according one’s needs.
The study aimed to explore the experts’ perspectives on self-care needs among clinically healthy adults. The risks caused by inadequate self-care practices and the determinants of self-care behaviour change were identified. The interviews with 12 experts in arts therapies and/or health psychology were conducted. The qualitative content analysis was used to process the data. Psychological, health-related, and social risks were the categories of risks identified. The determinants of self-care behaviour change were categorized as knowledge, self-efficacy, attitude, perceived cues to action, planning, awareness, social support, and motivation. The identified items will contribute to evidence-based development of the intervention to promote self-care.