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Professional content moderators play a critical role in preventing Internet users from being exposed to more sensitive content. However, recent literature has shown that this work places content moderators at increased risk for several psychological outcomes, including intrusive thoughts and vicarious stress trauma. This pilot study will assess the acceptability and feasibility of a brief (4-session) cognitive-behavioral workshop to reduce these risks.
The growing amount of user-generated content is forcing companies to hire more and more content moderators (CMs). There is ample empirical evidence that exposure to the trauma of others at work affects well-being and mental health , and research focused on CMs suggests that they experience similar effects as other professionals. This includes an increased risk of developing syndromes such as secondary posttraumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and burnout. Recent literature, although limited, indicates that CMs are already using coping strategies such as creating boundaries between work and personal life, although they expressed a preference for individual therapy with specialized professionals. However, this initial work points to the need for technology companies to develop prevention programs based on preventing exposure to traumatic content (.
Therefore, a CBT workshop consisting of four 90-minute group sessions was designed specifically to prevent work-related consequences in a small sample of content moderators. The workshop will have a cognitive-behavioral orientation, which has been shown to be more effective for posttraumatic symptoms. Psychological distress, PTSD symptoms, job satisfaction, and coping strategies will be measured before and after the intervention to assess the feasibility of the workshop.
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| Label | Type | Description | Intervention Names |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive Behavioural Workshop | Experimental | The experimental group will attend 4 weekly group sessions of 90 minutes each. The intervention will be delivered by a Ph.D. clinical psychologist with over 15 years of clinical experience. |
|
| Name | Type | Description | Arm Group Labels | Other Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Workshop for Content Moderators | Behavioral | This 4-session group workshop is based on the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It consists of four sessions:
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| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) | It is a simple measure of psychological distress. The K10 scale involves 10 questions about emotional states each with a five-level response scale. The measure can be used as a brief screen to identify levels of distress. The tool can be given to patients to complete, or alternatively the questions can be read to the patient by the practitioner. | Week 0, week 4, and week 12 |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Work Satisfaction Scale, JobStat'73 | It is made up of 5 questions related to their satisfaction with the job, possible continuity in it and whether they would recommend it to others. | Week 0, week 4, and week 12 |
| Coping Mechanisms Scale |
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Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
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| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Carlos López-Pinar, PhD | Universidad Europea de Valencia | Principal Investigator |
| Facility | Status | City | State | ZIP | Country | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEGA cloud services | Salamanca | Salamanca | 37002 | Spain |
| PubMed Identifier | Type | Citation | Retractions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Background | Léonard, M.-J., Saumier, D., & Brunet, A. (2020). When the lawyer becomes traumatized: A scoping review. SAGE Open, 10(3), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020957032 | ||
| 32284821 | Background | Lewis C, Roberts NP, Andrew M, Starling E, Bisson JI. Psychological therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2020 Mar 10;11(1):1729633. doi: 10.1080/20008198.2020.1729633. eCollection 2020. | |
| Background | Seigfried-Spellar, K. C. (2018) Assessing the Psychological Well-being and Coping Mechanisms of Law Enforcement Investigators vs. Digital Forensic Examiners of Child Pornography Investigations. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 33, 215-226. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-017-9248-7 | ||
| Background | Steiger, M., Bharucha, T. J., Venkatagiri, S., Riedl, M. J., & Lease, M. (2021). The psychological well-being of content moderators: The emotional labor of commercial moderation and avenues for improving support. In CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445092 |
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It measures how the participant cope with stress, collecting data from 16 strategies.
| Week 0, week 4, and week 12 |
| PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) | The PCL-C includes 17 items assessing a variety of symp- tomatic responses to stress, and respondents self-reported the extent to which they were bothered by these symptoms, within the past month, on a scale from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Extremely). | Week 0, week 4, and week 12 |
| Background | Spence, R., Bifulco, A., Bradbury, P., Martellozzo, E., & DeMarco, J. (2023a). The psychological impacts of content moderation on content moderators: A qualitative study. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 17(4), Article X. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2023-X-X |