Pragmatic measurement of mechanisms: Does use of coping strategies mediate the effects of a teacher stress intervention?

Supporting teachers to cope with occupational stress is an important area of research. Many studies have examined the initial efficacy of teacher stress interventions; however, none have tested potential causal mechanisms. A previous study of a bibliotherapy teacher stress intervention based in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) revealed positive effects on stress, coping, depression, and anxiety (n = 52, Eddy et al., 2022). The purpose of the present study was to examine the use of coping strategies as a mediator of treatment effects in the previously reported randomized control trial study. Growth modeling analyses revealed that reported use of coping strategies increased throughout the course of the intervention with the slope favoring the treatment group (moderate growth treatment d = 0.43; and overall treatment effect of d = 0.88). Reported use of coping strategies mediated the intervention effects on stress (31% of the total treatment effect) and coping (69% of the total direct effect) but did not mediate the intervention effects on depression or anxiety. These findings suggest that participants’ reported use of coping strategies led to immediate benefits of stress reduction and improved coping but were not associated with distal effects on depression and anxiety. Future teacher stress studies should consider including repeated measures of theory driven mechanisms to examine changes over time and hypothesized causal pathways to intervention effects.