Care Workers’ Well-Being and Rights’ Awareness

Focus

This work package will be devoted to assess care workers’ well-being and health. Based on the Work Demand/Resources Model, both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected to identify characteristics of employment that care workers face, the resources that they have available, and the needs that they identify. This will shed light on psychosocial working conditions that can affect care workers’ well-being across different European countries. Specifically, the Research Unit will examine how structural, demographic, psychological variables are related to care workers’ mental health and well-being both in private and public sectors.

Tasks 4.1. Quantitative data collection

Task 4.1.1 Questionnaires development

The questionnaire will use the structural variables obtained in WP2 and WP3. Different scales will include and, if necessary, translated and adapted to the different sociocultural contexts of the countries involved. Some items specifically developed for this study will be included to gather demographic information.

Task 4.1.2 Participants recruitment

After obtaining the approval of the competent ethical committee, care professional associations will be contacted in each country to present and explain the goal of the project and obtain permission for distributing the questionnaire to their associate members. Participants will be invited to complete an online version of the questionnaire. The anonymity and confidentiality of respondents will be ensured.

Task 4.1.3 Questionnaires administration

About 100 care workers in each country will be recruited. Given that the variables the project aims to assess fluctuate throughout the week, hence a diary methodology will be used to collect the data; specifically, data will be collected online, through the Qualtrics software, over the course of two work weeks, with measures on at least three days.

Task 4.1.4 Data analyses

First, confirmatory Factor Analysis and reliability analysis will be conducted to analyze the validity and reliability of the scales in different sociocultural contexts. Subsequently, the data from each person at three waves will be collected and analyzed.

Task 4.1.5 Preliminary discussion of results

Working sessions between researchers of different backgrounds in each WPs will be established to discuss the preliminary results.

Task 4.2 Qualitative data collection

Task 4.2.1 Facilitators training

A researcher will train two facilitators in each country about how to conduct a focus group. A template with instructions and questions to be considered in the focus group will be elaborated by the research group for the collecting data procedure.

Task 4.2.2 Participants recruitment

The procedure for recruitment will be the same as the one described for quantitative data collection, but participants will be informed they will have to discuss in group about one topic for about 60-90 minutes.

Task 4.2.3 Focus groups conduction

At least 4 homogeneous focus groups with care workers will be organised in each country. Each focus group will be composed of 10 key informants who will be willing to share their knowledge, experiences, and thoughts about their job. Sessions will be recorded in audio and transcribed verbatim.

Task 4.2.4 Data analyses

Transcripts will be analysed using the software for coding qualitative data Atlas.ti 7. Following a template analysis approach, a list of codes will be defined based on the main themes identified on the focus groups’ transcripts. Some of these codes will be defined a priori, however, a posteriori codes will be added while reading and interpreting the texts to complete an exhaustive analysis.

Task 4.2.5 Preliminary discussion of results

Working sessions between researchers of different backgrounds in each WPs will be established to discuss the preliminary results.

Task 4.3 Integrating quantitative and qualitative data

Findings obtained through quantitative and qualitative data will be integrated in order to obtain an in-depth analysis of the processes under study and realise a country-based report for each country and a user-friendly summary of the results