The Five-day challenge: How to turn a change in a chance.

An action-research to promote resilience and self-empowerment during lockdown

Abstract

Introduction. The social and sanitary emergency due to the spread of Coronavirus has certainly represented one of the most difficult challenges of contemporary world that has put at risk the psycho-physical health of people. Some studies in the field of psychological sciences have turned their attention to the impact of restrictive confinement within own homes, on the well-being and quality of life. Isolation, the lack of opportunity to socialization, the sense of job insecurity and economic precariousness, as well as the difficulty in managing a daily life without routine and predictability, have put a strain on people’s resilience, exposing them to numerous psycho-social risks. Aim of the study. Moving within Positive Psychology, the present action-research is aimed to investigate the level of well-being of Italians during the lockdown and promote the acquisition of proactive behaviours and self-empowerment. Method. We developed a self-report questionnaire and designed an intervention, called “the five-days challenge: how to turn a change into a chance”. A triangulated methodology has been implemented  in order to enrich the data from a double point of view, qualitative and quantitative. Results. Firstly, it was observed that dispositional optimism was positive associated with wellbeing, but that this positive association will be significantly mediated, in a negative way, by state anxiety. Secondly, the results have shown a statically significant effect of the intervention proposed on anxiety level reduction of participants. Implication. To sum up, the five-days challenge seemed to be a practical and operative intervention to promote self-empowerment in various situations dominated by uncertainty, which requires a great effort in terms of resilience and reappropriation of meaning.