Abstract
BackgroundIn a context where there is no treatment for the current COVID-19 virus, the combination of self-care behaviours together with confinement, are strategies to decrease the risk of contagion and remain healthy. However, there are no self-care measures to screen self-care activities in general population and which, could be briefly in a lockdown situation. This research aims to build and validate a psychometric tool to screen self-care activities in general population.MethodsFirstly, an exploratory factor analysis was performed in a sample of 226 participants to discover the underlying factorial structure and to reduce the number of items in the original tool into a significant pool of items related to self-care. Later a confirmatory factor analyses were performed in a new sample of 261 participants to test for the fit and goodness of factor solutions. Internal validity, reliability, and convergent validity between its score with perceived stress and psychological well-being measures were examined on this sample.ResultsThe exploratory analyses suggested a four-factor solution, corresponding to health consciousness, nutrition and physical activity, sleep, and intra-personal and inter-personal coping skills (14 items). Then, the four-factor structure was confirmed as the best model fit for self-care activities. The tool demonstrated good reliability, predictive validity of individuals’ perception of coping with COVID-19 lockdown, and convergent validity with well-being and perceived stress.ConclusionsThis screening tool could be helpful to address future evaluations and interventions to promote healthy behaviours. Likewise, this tool can be targeted to specific population self-care’s needs during a scalable situation.
Highlights
In a context where there is no treatment for the current COVID-19 virus, the combination of self-care behaviours together with confinement, are strategies to decrease the risk of contagion and remain healthy
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) models with one and n-correlated factors were considered since a unidimensional solution was initially hypothesized, but we considered the n-factor solution resulted in the exploratory factor analysis (EFA)
The economic monthly income of the sample was as follows: the 17.5% had no income (27/40), the 11.9% earned less than a minimum wage monthly (16/27), the 16.4% earned 2 mwm (18/37), the 18.6% earned 3 mwm (22/42), the 12.4% earned 4 mwm (12/28), the 15% earned more than 5 mwm (16/34), and the 18.8% preferred not to answer (13/18)
Summary
In a context where there is no treatment for the current COVID-19 virus, the combination of self-care behaviours together with confinement, are strategies to decrease the risk of contagion and remain healthy. Getting involved in self-care activities as part of hygienic practices can help to manage stress and prevent difficulties and symptoms of health problems [7] This scenario allows examining the main strategies that people are using for personal self-care, since confinement restrictions entail important changes on their daily habits and routines. This fact leads us to consider that a population brief screening of self-care activities might be used as an important strategy to look for as-yet-unrecognised health risk factors, which later, formal evaluation and intervention strategies can be addressed to
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