Corona Disease Anxiety in Teachers: The Role of Existential Thinking and Meaning in Life

The unprecedented Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has outstandingly challenged all aspects of individual lives, especially their sources of a meaningful life and spiritual well-being. Hence, we set out to investigate the role of existential thinking and meaning in life in predicting Corona disease anxiety in teachers.

This was a correlational-descriptive study carried out on two hundred sixty-nine volunteers from primary school teachers who were working in 2022 in Kermanshah Province, Iran. Participants were selected by the multi-stage cluster sampling method, and they were measured by questionnaires created in Google Form, including Alipour et al.’s (2020) corona disease anxiety scale, Scherr (2006) existential thinking questionnaire, and Steger et al.’s (2006) meaning in life questionnaire. Finally, the data were analyzed by IBM SPSS software, version 27 using Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis.

The results showed that existential thinking (r=-0.640, P<0.01), as well as, meaning in life (r=-0.668, P<0.01) had an inverse and significant correlation with corona disease anxiety. Based on regression analysis, existential thinking (β=-0.152) and, meaning in life (β=-0.329) negatively and significantly predicted corona disease anxiety.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that corona disease anxiety has a significant negative correlation with existential thinking and meaning in life. In addition, the findings of this study support the role of predictor variables in the prediction of teachers’ Corona disease anxiety. Generally, 41% of the total variance of corona disease anxiety is predicted by existential thinking and meaning in life.