The Effect of Educational Intervention on Anxiety and Quality of Life Among Individuals Referring to Healthcare Centers in the Face of COVID-19

Abstract

Educational interventions are helpful strategies to empower communities encountering the threat of pandemics like Covid-19. This study was carried out to examine the effect of educational intervention on anxiety control and improvement in public quality of life. A quasi-experimental study. The study was conducted among individuals referred to healthcare centers of Qazvin province, Iran, in 2020. Given that Qazvin consists of nine urban healthcare centers, two centers were selected by a simple random selection method. After considering inclusion and exclusion mentioned criteria, 240 individuals were selected to participate in the research and were randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control. Following the educational intervention, all study variables, including knowledge score, anxiety level, and quality of life, improved significantly in the experimental group compared to the pre-intervention phase (P<0.05). The most significant change was in knowledge score with a nearly large effect size (0.63), presenting an increase of 40.09% from 11.1 to 18.8 exactly after intervention and 12.2 after passing one month from the date of educational intervention; while the quality of life presented a 3.2% increase with a small effect size (0.28). Our findings have implications for the development and implementation of psychological interventions, particularly educational programs. During the outbreak, such strategies can empower the public and diminish the negative emotional effects of the pandemic, helping people to cope with the current situation, and decrease the risk of suffering future psychological disorders.