Anyone know of any studies on Assistant Psychologist Stress/Wellbeing/Burnout?

[AntonBarnwell]

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering whether anyone knows of any research or evaluations of Assistant Psychologists? My personal experience of being an AP is that it is quite stressful! Wondering whether there is any literature to back that up.

Thanks!

Anton

[miriam]

We had a stressometer on the forum for a year, and asked people to rate their stress each time they logged in. We got about 20,000 ratings, and then asked at the end of the year what career stage people were at, if they had applied for training that year, and if so what the outcome had been. I keep meaning to find a way to analyse it and publish the results, but when I tried to plot stress over time it coloured in the entire page (except for a skinny stripe that reflected a short technical problem, and slightly less traffic on xmas day).

[AntonBarnwell]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for your reply! That sounds like an awfully big dataset! Really interesting area though.

I don't pretend to be a stats expert, but I did complete a Masters last year on Psychological Research Methods and would be happy to have a look over the dataset, if that would help?

Some of the research I have found suggests that burnout is more likely in inexperienced psychologists, but a sense of compassion fatigue is more likely in more experienced psychologists - both of which are related to stress & wellbeing. I wonder how that might translate to Assistant Psychologists as they can be more experienced in those roles, but also often are under other pressures (applying to Clinical Training, less income, less power, less control etc).

Thanks again,
Anton

[hawke]

I believe the research is similar on trainee teachers - drop out rates are very high during training and early career. And also high levels of stress for PhD students. I wonder if there is something wider about being an early career professional?

[AntonBarnwell]

That's really interesting - I'll check that out. Thanks!

[rebeccaroisin]

We had a stressometer on the forum for a year, and asked people to rate their stress each time they logged in. We got about 20,000 ratings, and then asked at the end of the year what career stage people were at, if they had applied for training that year, and if so what the outcome had been. I keep meaning to find a way to analyse it and publish the results, but when I tried to plot stress over time it coloured in the entire page (except for a skinny stripe that reflected a short technical problem, and slightly less traffic on xmas day).

I could possibly help with this. I'm good at reshaping and cleaning data ...

This week I'm very busy but I could have some time next week to take a look at some data (if its shareable - no PII?) and see what could be possible?

Key questions:
1. do individuals make multiple stress records over time?
2. can the summary information (career stage etc) be easily linked to an individual's stress ratings?
3. are the ratings associated with registered accounts or eg IP addresses?

[miriam]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for your reply! That sounds like an awfully big dataset! Really interesting area though.

I don't pretend to be a stats expert, but I did complete a Masters last year on Psychological Research Methods and would be happy to have a look over the dataset, if that would help?

Some of the research I have found suggests that burnout is more likely in inexperienced psychologists, but a sense of compassion fatigue is more likely in more experienced psychologists - both of which are related to stress & wellbeing. I wonder how that might translate to Assistant Psychologists as they can be more experienced in those roles, but also often are under other pressures (applying to Clinical Training, less income, less power, less control etc).

Thanks again,
Anton

Thanks. I'll see what our data looks like, and whether my colleagues in UCL/Anna Freud centre are interested and then I'll get back to you.

We had a stressometer on the forum for a year, and asked people to rate their stress each time they logged in. We got about 20,000 ratings, and then asked at the end of the year what career stage people were at, if they had applied for training that year, and if so what the outcome had been. I keep meaning to find a way to analyse it and publish the results, but when I tried to plot stress over time it coloured in the entire page (except for a skinny stripe that reflected a short technical problem, and slightly less traffic on xmas day).

I could possibly help with this. I'm good at reshaping and cleaning data ...

This week I'm very busy but I could have some time next week to take a look at some data (if its shareable - no PII?) and see what could be possible?

Key questions:
1. do individuals make multiple stress records over time?
2. can the summary information (career stage etc) be easily linked to an individual's stress ratings?
3. are the ratings associated with registered accounts or eg IP addresses?

The data is very clean (a user identification number, date & time stamp, 0-100 rating, for 15,000 entries over the year). There are differing numbers of ratings by different users - some rated most days for the whole year, some occasionally, some a short sequence then opted out, and some only gave a single rating - and most users have indicated whether they were applying for training in that cohort or not. We then might have (though I have yet to locate) the end survey with the same user identification number, asking about career stage and outcomes of applications for training.

I'm actually wondering whether or not to put up the stressometer again now for a couple of weeks, to see how the ratings compare with Covid around to the prior sample from the same time of year.

[miriam]

I finally did this

[AntonBarnwell]

Brilliant! Should bring up some interesting data, I am sure! I filled it out but I'm not sure whether I am in the intended participant pool - I'm currently on my first year of training.

[miriam]

Yeah, everyone who uses the forum is the intended participant pool. We just wanted to know whether stress reflected application status, and whether this was "contagious" amongst forum users when we originally set up the survey. But we absolutely want all career stages who use the forum to participate so we can get an accurate picture!