(PS9-A7) Personal Meaning as a Predictor of Skills Practice Following a Single-session Self-guided Online Anxiety Intervention

To improve the accessibility of evidence-based mental health support, there has been an increase in the development and implementation of self-guided online anxiety management interventions. Although studies indicate that these interventions result in a variety of positive mental health outcomes, they also indicate low adherence to homework and skills practice. Homework adherence and skills practice has been associated with positive treatment outcomes, likely due to its integral role in building and generalizing the skills learned in session (see Kazantzis et al., 2020 for a review). As such, the present study aimed to examine the role of personal meaning, a known predictor of behavior change, as a predictor of skills practice following a single-session self-guided online anxiety intervention.

The intervention provided psychoeducation on stress and anxiety, as well as taught participants the Dialectical Behavior Therapy skill TIPP (DBT; Linehan, 2014). At pre-intervention, participants (N = 89) reported their perceived personal meaning of skills practice and completed the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 item (GAD-7; Spitzer et al., 2006). Participants then reported the frequency of TIPP skill practice over the last week at one-week follow-up. We hypothesized that, controlling for anxiety, greater perceived meaning at pre-workshop would predict greater skills practice at one-week follow-up.

The results indicated that with all variables in the model, the model was significant, accounting for 15% of the variance of skills practice at one-week follow-up (R² = .16, F(2, 87) = 4.56, p = .02). Controlling for anxiety at pre-workshop, perceived meaning at pre-workshop significantly predicted skills use at one-week follow-up (β = .39, p < .01). The findings support previous research identifying personal meaning as a predictor of behavior change, as well as provides new support for personal meaning as a predictor of skills practice following a self-guided, single-session online anxiety intervention.