Ad hoc Intervention Programs to Foster the Emotional Management of a Group of Public Service Interpreters, a Group of Telephone Interpreters and a Group of Social Workers

Abstract

Generally, public service interpreters and social workers experience symptoms of an anxious depressive nature, due to their works. For this reason, we aimed to design three ad hoc emotional management intervention programs to evaluate their impact, combining quantitative and qualitative information. The study developed a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test design, performing T-tests on related samples for each group. Three ad hoc intervention programs were developed for a group of public service interpreters, a group of telephone interpreters and a group of social workers. The study also included a control group that did not receive any intervention. The Bar-On ICE, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the BCSQ-36 were used to evaluate the Emotional Intelligence factors, the Burnout syndrome and the Empathy processes. Most of the emotional intelligence and empathy factors showed statistically significant differences between the pre-test and the post-test, in favor of the latter for each of the groups. The control group’s T2 results worsened, as they had not received any form of intervention. This paper will discuss how these participants have incorporated the key takeaways of the intervention programs in their emotional management at work.