Clinical trial NCT06383715: Congitive Behavioral Therapy Workshop for Content Moderators
Official title: Acceptability and Feasibility of a Congitive Behavioral Therapy Workshop for Content Moderators: a Pilot Study
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Work-Related Condition
Work-Related Stress Disorder
Lead sponsor: Universidad Europea de Valencia
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2024-04-25
Enrollment: 12
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 65
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: 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.

Detailed description: 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.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Actively work as a professional content moderator, for at least 6 months.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Presence of a psychotic or personality disorder as defined by DSM-5 criteria.
* Receive another psychological treatment during the time of the study.

Primary outcomes:
measure: The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10)
timeFrame: Week 0, week 4, and week 12
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Work Satisfaction Scale, JobStat'73
timeFrame: Week 0, week 4, and week 12
measure: Coping Mechanisms Scale
timeFrame: Week 0, week 4, and week 12
measure: PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C)
timeFrame: Week 0, week 4, and week 12
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Salamanca
country: Spain
facility: MEGA cloud services
Study officials:
affiliation: Universidad Europea de Valencia
name: Carlos López-Pinar, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: 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
citation: 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.
citation: 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
citation: 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
citation: 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