RT Journal Article
T1 Work engagement and sense of coherence as predictors of psychological distress during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile
A1 Gómez Salgado, Juan
A1 Delgado García, Diemen
A1 Ortega Moreno, Mónica
A1 Fagundo Rivera, Javier
A1 El Khoury Moreno, Luis
A1 Vilches Arenas, Ángel
A1 Ruiz Frutos, Carlos
AB Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between sense of coherence, workengagement, and work environment variables as predictors of the level of psychological distressduring the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile.Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study collected between April 22 and December 16, 2020,using non-probabilistic snowball sampling. The study variables and instruments were sociodemographicvariables, work engagement (UWES-9 scale), sense of coherence (AntonovskySOC-13 scale), and psychological distress (GHQ-12 scale). Multivariate analysis and binary logisticregression were performed including the scores of the three questionnaires and othervariables such as effectiveness, safety, stress, health perception, and sex. Finally, the CHAIDtechnique was applied to create a segmentation tree.Results: 72.7 % of participants had high levels of psychological distress, more predominantlyamong women, with work stress and low sense of coherence acting as the most influential mediatorsin generating psychological distress, and even more so when both were combined. Lowwork engagement and the availability of safe and effective means to prevent infection werepredictors of psychological distress among workers.Conclusion: During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, factors that contributed to psychologicaldistress in the Chilean population were identified. These included a fair or poorperception of health, being a woman, work-related stress, availability of safety measures, low level of work engagement, and low level of sense of coherence. Identifying these factors may helpprevent similar effects in future phases of the current pandemic or in future pandemics.
PB Elsevier
SN 2405-8440 (electrónico)
YR 2024
FD 2024-05
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24018
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24018
LA eng
NO Gómez-Salgado, J., Delgado-García, D., Ortega-Moreno, M., Fagundo-Rivera, J., El Khoury-Moreno, L., Vilches-Arenas, Á., & Ruiz-Frutos, C. (2024). Work engagement and sense of coherence as predictors of psychological distress during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. In Heliyon (Vol. 10, Issue 10, p. e31327). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e31327
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 13 jun 2026