The effect of online solution-focused support program on parents with high level of anxiety in the COVID-19 pandemic: A randomised controlled study.

Abstract

AimThe aim of this study was to determine the anxiety levels of parents with children aged 3‐6 years because of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic and to examine the effects of Solution‐Focused Support Program (SFSP) applied to parents with a high level of anxiety.MethodsThe study was conducted as a parallel‐group, randomised controlled design. The sample of the study consisted of 77 parents who were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (control group n = 40; intervention group n = 37). One session of online SFSP was applied to the intervention group each week and 4 sessions were applied in total. No intervention was applied to the control group. The data were collected using introductory information form and State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) programme and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 23 application were used in the analysis of the data. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to examine a hypothesised model that SFSP has both direct and indirect effects on the anxiety levels of parents.ResultsThe state and trait anxiety mean scores of the intervention group decreased compared with the pre‐intervention mean scores after the implemented programme. While this difference between state anxiety scores was statistically significant (P ≤ .001), the difference between trait anxiety scores was not statistically significant (P > .05). There was no statistically significant difference between the pre‐test and post‐test STAI total scores of the control group.ConclusionsIn the study, it has been found that SFSP applied to parents with a high level of anxiety is an effective method in reducing the state anxiety levels of parents.