Recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic: Evaluation of a group intervention with young people in clinical and social psychology

This study will evaluate the effectiveness of a community intervention of six group workshops for adolescents and young adults. The intervention was set up by the InterCom Project and is delivered by trained facilitators. It aims to equip participants in a context of current (COVID-19 pandemic) or future social change based on clinical and social psychology. This research project will take place in three phases. 1) A qualitative study will be conducted with 100 participants to analyze the degree of satisfaction (measured by questionnaire) and written comments from participants. 2) A quantitative pilot study will be conducted to measure the effectiveness of the workshops with 60 participants. The effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated by examining change on the following psychological measures: self-esteem, well-being, identity clarity, resilience, cognitive flexibility, optimism, self-compassion, empathy and open-mindedness. The change will represent the difference between the responses on the measures before starting the workshop series, at the end of the sixth (final) workshop and 2 months after the end of the last workshop. 3) The main study will be conducted with 200 participants to assess the change in participants on the above-mentioned measures. In addition, a just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) will be added in one of the two experimental groups. The just-in-time adaptive intervention will consist of sending text messages between workshops to capture the individual's psychological state and provide support adapted to their state. The benefits of JITAI will be assessed by comparing participants who received the workshops to those who received the workshops and JITAI.