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Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs

The impact that COVID-19 had on individuals globally has been immense. Our study aims to determine if the various COVID-19 related beliefs (information seeking; invulnerability; disruption; health importance and response effectiveness) are predictors of perceived stress and if self-efficacy acts as...

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Autores principales: Meyer, Natanya, Niemand, Thomas, Davila, Andrés, Kraus, Sascha
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8797252/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35089967
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263022
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author Meyer, Natanya
Niemand, Thomas
Davila, Andrés
Kraus, Sascha
author_facet Meyer, Natanya
Niemand, Thomas
Davila, Andrés
Kraus, Sascha
author_sort Meyer, Natanya
collection PubMed
description The impact that COVID-19 had on individuals globally has been immense. Our study aims to determine if the various COVID-19 related beliefs (information seeking; invulnerability; disruption; health importance and response effectiveness) are predictors of perceived stress and if self-efficacy acts as a mediator in reducing perceived COVID-19 related stress. From a large sample of 23,629, data were assessed using validated multi-item measures for seven COVID-19 related beliefs, self-efficacy and perceived stress. After conducting a series of tests and checks via Confirmatory Factor Analyses, linear modelling and mediation analyses with bootstrapping were applied to test direct and mediation hypotheses. It is found that stress perception is most strongly affected by self-efficacy and perceived disruption. Except for information seeking, which positively affected perceived stress, self-efficacy partially mediates all other COVID-19 related beliefs (perceptions of disruption, health importance and response effectiveness) in conjunction with their direct effects. Only perceived invulnerability elicited opposite effects on stress, increasing stress directly but decreasing stress indirectly by increasing self-efficacy. This finding gives reason to believe that individuals may disclose that they are less vulnerable to COVID-19, fostering their self-efficacy, but still accept that stressing factors such as economic and social consequences apply. Overall, reinforcing self-efficacy was carved out as the most important resilience factor against perceiving high levels of stress. On this basis, implications for research and practice are provided.
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spelling pubmed-87972522022-01-29 Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs Meyer, Natanya Niemand, Thomas Davila, Andrés Kraus, Sascha PLoS One Research Article The impact that COVID-19 had on individuals globally has been immense. Our study aims to determine if the various COVID-19 related beliefs (information seeking; invulnerability; disruption; health importance and response effectiveness) are predictors of perceived stress and if self-efficacy acts as a mediator in reducing perceived COVID-19 related stress. From a large sample of 23,629, data were assessed using validated multi-item measures for seven COVID-19 related beliefs, self-efficacy and perceived stress. After conducting a series of tests and checks via Confirmatory Factor Analyses, linear modelling and mediation analyses with bootstrapping were applied to test direct and mediation hypotheses. It is found that stress perception is most strongly affected by self-efficacy and perceived disruption. Except for information seeking, which positively affected perceived stress, self-efficacy partially mediates all other COVID-19 related beliefs (perceptions of disruption, health importance and response effectiveness) in conjunction with their direct effects. Only perceived invulnerability elicited opposite effects on stress, increasing stress directly but decreasing stress indirectly by increasing self-efficacy. This finding gives reason to believe that individuals may disclose that they are less vulnerable to COVID-19, fostering their self-efficacy, but still accept that stressing factors such as economic and social consequences apply. Overall, reinforcing self-efficacy was carved out as the most important resilience factor against perceiving high levels of stress. On this basis, implications for research and practice are provided. Public Library of Science 2022-01-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8797252/ /pubmed/35089967 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263022 Text en © 2022 Meyer et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Meyer, Natanya
Niemand, Thomas
Davila, Andrés
Kraus, Sascha
Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title_full Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title_fullStr Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title_full_unstemmed Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title_short Biting the bullet: When self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of COVID-19 beliefs
title_sort biting the bullet: when self-efficacy mediates the stressful effects of covid-19 beliefs
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8797252/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35089967
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263022
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