A path of right understanding and skilful action: measuring compassion and testing mobile interventions in helping professionals
A path of right understanding and skilful action: measuring compassion and testing mobile interventions in helping professionals
Helping professionals encounter others’ suffering and work to alleviate it. This work can be fulfilling, but it also contributes to compassion fatigue and burnout. Thesis of Denis Deriglazov examines professional quality of life in helping professionals and asks: what measures work for understanding their experience, and what can help sustain them?
The first study compared three versions of the Professional Quality of Life scale: the original 30-item showed weak psychometric performance, while the shorter Brief ProQOL-12 and Short ProQOL performed well. The second study developed and validated short versions of the Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scales, measuring compassion for self, others, and from others.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of mobile app interventions for helping professionals found strongest evidence for personal accomplishment, mixed support for emotional exhaustion, and limited evidence for compassion fatigue. The thesis tested MBSR-14, a 14-day mobile adaptation of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, in a randomised controlled trial: feasible and well-used, but it did not outperform the waitlist control, due to low baseline distress and brief dose.
Thesis shows that before compassion constructs can be improved, they must first be measured with the right instruments and in the right populations. This supports brief, psychometrically strong measures that reduce participant burden, points to the need for screening in future trials, and suggests MyCap/REDCap as a platform for mindfulness interventions. The thesis follows a path from clearer understanding to practical action: measuring the burdens and strengths of helping professionals more accurately, and testing scalable ways to support those who work with the suffering of others.