Predicting psychological service providers' empowerment in the light of the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak: A structural equation modelling analysis

Arnout, Boshra A.

This study aimed to investigate the predictors of psychological service providers' empowerment in the light of the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak. The researcher prepared a psychological service providers' empowerment scale that consisted of 28 items, and this scale was applied in a random sample consisting of 975 psychological service providers. The results showed that the empowerment scale has acceptable validity and reliability. The results of the exploratory factor analysis indicated that the 28 scale items saturate on seven factors, which accounted for 64.42% of the total variance of the scale: the first factor named expect psychological services effectiveness accounted for 27.86%, the second factor named self‐stimulation accounted for 9.71%, the third factor named responsibilities and duties accounted for 7.12%, the fourth factor named psychological services work environment accounted for 6.51%, the fifth factor named psychological service providers’ decision‐making accounted for 5.37%, the sixth factor named creative psychological service provider behaviour accounted for 4.45%, and the seventh factor named psychological services confidence accounted for 3.82% of the total variance of a psychological service providers' empowerment. In order to study the ability to predict the empowerment among psychological service providers, the researcher developed a structural model for psychological service providers' empowerment and then used the structural equation model analysis. The results showed that the proposed structural model of a psychological service providers' empowerment has goodness‐of‐fit, and these results emphasised the ability to predict psychological service providers' empowerment by seven tested factors.