key: cord-0954652-xdhaw58r authors: Lizana, Pablo A.; Vega-Fernadez, Gustavo title: Teacher Teleworking during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Association between Work Hours, Work–Family Balance and Quality of Life date: 2021-07-16 journal: Int J Environ Res Public Health DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18147566 sha: 987185eb08c08ef0b1154edd0c1ec6b8ee73edcf doc_id: 954652 cord_uid: xdhaw58r Background: Teachers worldwide had to reinvent their work routine according to teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic, a work format that negatively impacts individuals’ physical and mental health. This study evaluates the association between work hours, work–family balance and quality of life (QoL) among teachers during the Chilean health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers from across Chile were contacted via email and social media to answer an online survey. QoL was evaluated via the SF-36 questionnaire, work hours and work–family balance in the pandemic. A total of 336 teachers from across Chile participated in this study. Teachers had a low QoL score, associated with age (p < 0.05). Teachers who were ≤44 showed lower deterioration risks in the Physical Component Summary (OR: 0.54) than the ≥45-year-old age group; simultaneously, the younger group (≤44 years) had a greater risk (OR: 2.46) of deterioration in the Mental Component Summary than teachers over 45 years. A total of 78.7% of teachers reported having increased their work hours during the COVID-19 pandemic due to teleworking and 86% indicated negative effects on their work–family balance. Pandemic work hours and negative work–family balance increase the risk of reducing the Mental Component Summary (OR: 1.902; OR: 3.996, respectively). Teachers presented low median QoL scores, especially in the Mental Component Summary, suggesting that it would be beneficial to promote a better workload distribution for teachers in emergency contexts, considering the adverse effects of teleworking. In December 2019, a respiratory disease was detected in the city of Wuhan, China; on 9 January 2020, Chinese health authorities via the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it to be a novel coronavirus [1]. On 12 January 2020 the genetic sequence of what we know as COVID-19 was made public and on 11 March 2020 a global declaration was made that the infection met all the characteristics of a pandemic [2] . The first measures in affected countries were confinement, social distancing and quarantines [2] [3] [4] [5] . In this sense, these measures obligated various labor groups to implement teleworking [6] , a work format which has been associated with psychosocial risks due to increased occupational stress [7, 8] . Furthermore, these work conditions generate significant problems between personal and working life [7, 9] due to the lack of control over working time and family attention at home affecting work-family balance [10] . The health measures for the COVID-19 pandemic (especially quarantines) were also reported to have negative effects on the mental health of people, promoting panic, anxiety, depression, frustration, rage, boredom and paranoia [11] [12] [13] . This background, along with the catastrophic context generated by the health emergency, causes people to develop mass hysteria, bringing negative consequences for mental and physical health [12, 14] ; this manifests in diminished hours of physical activity and sleep, and increased alcohol and tobacco use [15] . Social distancing and confinement also led to school closures, generating major impacts on national dynamics [16] [17] [18] [19] . School closures by May 2020 left 1.2 billion students worldwide without in-person classes [18] . In Chile, the suspension of classes and closure of schools, daycares and universities was declared on 16 March 2020 [20] . Along with class suspensions in Chile, from 25 March there were confinement measures, mobility restrictions and quarantines [20] . School closures generated major challenges for teachers who had to reinvent their work methodology around teleworking, immediately learning to work with necessary technology for online courses and modifying their teaching and learning model by adjusting it to the pandemic context [18, 21, 22] ; along with exposing their personal spaces (home) and personal contact for student and parent/guardian attention in expanded timeframes [23] . This teleworking context for teachers led to various consequences in health conditions including depression, anxiety, stress and burnout syndrome due to work overload during the pandemic [24] [25] [26] . The impact of teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic among Chilean teachers is reported to have contributed to development of anxiety and stress, with high workloads, exhaustion and burnout [27] . Other reports in Chile, Latin America and the Caribbean reveal that teacher teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic has meant greater time demands for class preparation and higher stress added to family worries [18] . Furthermore, before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the professions with the greatest deterioration in health worldwide was teaching [28] [29] [30] , with significant increases in the deterioration of mental health and physical discomfort in professional practice, with consequent psychosocial deterioration and quality of life (QoL) disorders derived from occupational stress [31] [32] [33] [34] and burnout [35] [36] [37] . In this regard, recent studies have reported a decrease in QoL during the health crisis in teachers compared to QoL scores before the pandemic [38] . Given that teachers worldwide have been considered a high-risk population for rates of professional ailments impacting their QoL since before the pandemic, there are studies on the factors that impact Chilean teachers' physical and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic [31, 33, 34, [38] [39] [40] . Therefore, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the association between the intensity of teleworking hours during the pandemic, work-family balance and quality of life in Chilean teachers during the COVID-19 health emergency. A cross-sectional study was conducted between the months of July and October 2020, a period of confinement and teleworking for teachers. A total of 362 teachers made up our initial sample, with the inclusion criteria of all teachers who had teleworking with primary or secondary school students; 14 teachers were excluded from the sample due to not satisfactorily completing all instruments, with another 12 were excluded for being university professors or teachers in higher learning institutes. The teachers considered in the final sample were from 14 of the 16 current regions in Chile. The majority came from the Valparaíso Region (57.44%), followed by the Metropolitan Region (15.77%) and the Arica and Parinacota Region (10.42%). Teachers provided information about their age, gender, marital status, region and city of residence within Chilean territory. Participating teachers provided information about the funding type of the establishment where they worked (public, private with state subsidies/charter school, or private without state subsidies) and work contract type (fixed-term or indefinite). Regarding the realization of telework, they also replied whether they were working 1 = more or 2 = fewer or the same number of hours as before the pandemic, considering the hours where they gave classes and all the hours in which teachers prepare materials, revise and create tests, supporting students and parents/guardians and other administrative work typical of the profession. All included teachers were teleworking. Personal information provided by teachers was related to the impact of telework on work-family balance. In this question they had to answer 1 = if family and personal relations were affected as a result of teleworking; 2 = family and personal relations were not affected by teleworking. The SF-36 survey, which has been adapted syntactically and semantically to the Chilean idiosyncrasy [41] and validated in Chilean teachers [38] , was applied to evaluate QoL. The instrument consists of 36 questions measuring 8 health dimensions: physical function, bodily pain, role limitations related to physical problems, general health perception, vitality, social functioning, role limitations due to emotional problems and mental health, which are finally grouped into two summary measurements: Physical Component Summary and Mental Component Summary [42] . Survey score results are measured on a scale of 0 to 100, after which a t-score value is calculated with a median of 50 and a standard deviation of 10 for each of the 8 dimensions, which are categorized in the two summary measurements, Physical Component Summary and the Mental Component Summary. To calculate the t-score value, standardized values are used according to the method recommended by the creator and values greater or lesser than 50 indicate higher or lower QoL, respectively [43] . Regarding the reliability of the scale, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was α = 0.885 for the physical function scale, α = 0.880 for the limitations due to physical problems scale, α = 0.878 for the bodily pain scale, α = 0.874 for the general health perceptions scale, α = 0.867 for the vitality scale, α = 0.868 for the social functioning scale, α = 0.878 for the role limitations due to emotional problems scale, α = 0.865 for the mental health scale, α = 0.877 for the Physical Component Summary and α = 0.864 for the Mental Component Summary. Teachers were contacted by email and social media (Facebook and Instagram) following a snowballing approximation. Those who accepted participation proceeded to respond to the online instruments. The survey platform used was SurveyMonkey (SurveyMonkey, San Mateo, CA, USA). Prior to data collection, each participant had to read and sign informed consent, which invited them to voluntarily participate in the study in a fully confidential way, without pay, compensation or conflict of interest with the researchers. To this regard, this study fulfills all the ethical requirements of the Helsinki Declaration, approved by the Bioethics Committee at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (n • BIOEPUCV-H 393-2021). The associations of sociodemographic variables were evaluated between each gender and age category and the 50th percentile of the Physical and Mental Component Summary via the chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test. Age was categorized according to scores on the National Health Survey 2009-2010 (≤44 years old and ≥45 years old) from the Chilean Health Ministry [44] . QoL scores on their eight scales and the two summary measurements are described in the total sample, following which comparisons are made of medians between genders and age categories via t-tests for parametric variables and Wilcoxon tests for non-parametric variables according to the Shapiro-Wilk normality test. The 50th percentiles (50p) of each summary factor (Physical and Mental Component Summary) were used as a cutoff point to dichotomize the data. The subjects were classified in low (below 50p) or fair/good (above 50p) categories. Finally, three logistical regression models were made with the physical and mental health QoL measurements as dependent variables to evaluate the association with the following variables. First, with work hours in the pandemic and the work-family balance variable were used in the first model; the domestic work hours variable was incorporated in the second model; and, in the final one, age and gender variables were added. The goodness of fit of each logistical regression model was proven with the Hosmer-Lemeshow test. Data were analyzed with STATA 16 statistical software (2017, Stata Corp. LLC, College Station, TX, USA). The total sample consisted of 336 teachers (79% women, n = 265) with a median age of 37.5 ± 10.7 years, with no significant differences observed between age medians between both genders. Table 1 shows the sociodemographic characteristics in the total sample after which the associations of these variables are evaluated between gender and age categories. A significant association was observed between age and marital status (p < 0.01) with a greater prevalence of single people in the ≤44-year-old group and age with the variable contract type, where teachers ≥ 45 years old had a higher percentage of indefinite contracts. In Table 2 we can observe the sociodemographic characteristics associated between the lowest and highest scores of the physical and mental health QoL components according to the 50th percentile. The group of teachers who were ≤44 years is significantly associated (p < 0.01) with a low score (score < p50) on the mental QoL component, with a prevalence of 84% versus 16% in the second age group (≥45 years). However, in the physical health component the first age group is significantly associated (p < 0.01) with a high QoL score (score > p50) and a prevalence of 82%. A significant association is also observed (p < 0.01) between lower scores (