Participants
The study participants are at least 18 years old. This was a necessary limitation, as the longer-term impact of the teacher-student relationship on the well-being of adults was investigated. In addition, the participants had to have good German language skills and have gone through the German school system.
Study participants were recruited via mailing lists and notes on the notice boards at the XXX, from different groups in social media networks like Facebook and Instagram. Through a call on the website "Survey Circle," more individuals were informed about the study.
As an incentive for participation for all participants, three coupons of ten euros each for an online shop were drawn in lots. Therefore, the study participants were motivated to leave their e-mail addresses at the end of the survey.
Informed consent
The objectives and goals, detailed information about assessment and intervention, and the procedure of randomisation were explained to the participants. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to their inclusion. The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Siegen.
Materials
Current well-being was assessed using measures of life satisfaction, stress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and resilience.
Life satisfaction
The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), developed by Diener et al. [23], was used to assess life satisfaction of the participants. The SWLS consists of five items and has evolved into a frequently used measurement tool in psychological research because of its high reliability and internal validity. Cronbach’s alpha is 0.86 in the present sample. In addition, the results of this questionnaire tend to correlate highly with the results of other measures with similar survey objectives and can be applied to different age groups [23].
Self-esteem
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES) developed by Morris Rosenberg [24] was used to measure participants current self-esteem. Initially developed to measure only the self-esteem of high school students but is now used to measure all age groups. It is characterized by a high reliability and validity and produces results that correlate strongly with similar measuring instruments [24]. The internal consistency of the SES in this sample was high with a Cronbach’s α of 0.90. Studies have also established a correlation between the results of the SES and the results of questionnaires used to survey anxiety and depression [25].
Depression, anxiety, and stress
To measure these variables, the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), originally developed by Lovibond and Lovibond [26], translated into German language by Nilges and Essau [27], was used. This questionnaire consists of 21 items with a four-level Likert scale. Seven items each out of the 21 total items measure the participants’ depression, anxiety and stress perception. The advantage of the DASS-21 is that it can be used to assess almost all age groups. Recent research has shown that the results of DASS-21 correlate significantly with the results of other measures that also measure mixed variables such as anxiety and depression. Overall, the DASS-21 is also defined by its validity and reliability [26]. Cronbach’s α was in this sample 0.71 for depression, 0.79 for anxiety, 0.86 for stress, and 0.91 for the total value.
Resilience
In this study, the subject's resilience was measured with the resilience scale (RS-11), developed by Schumacher et al. [28]. It assesses factors of resilience such as optimism, emotional stability, joy, energy and openness for new things in one scale [29]. The RS-11 has established itself as a sensible alternative to the long form RS-25. In one study it was found that the differences between the results of the RS-11 and the RS-25 are not significant (difference in mean values = − 0.080; median = − 0.042; effect strength = 0.11). Thus, the use of the RS-11 in research could be recommended as a valid measuring instrument [30]. Furthermore, the internal consistency of the one scale questionnaire was excellent in the present study with a Cronbach’s α of 0.90.
Experiences
Initially, the participants were asked to briefly outline their three most significant experiences with teachers in their childhood and/or adolescence. For this purpose, the authors used a self-designed questionnaire. The participants were first informed that it is irrelevant whether they describe a positive or a negative experience. Afterwards, the participants were asked to report on this experience with a teacher in a few sentences. Second, the individual experiences were evaluated in the questionnaire by the participants answering several questions on a five-level Likert scale. They rated (a) the valence of the experience, (b) how motivating it was for them, and (c) how it affected their self-confidence when it happened. Each of the three aspects was evaluated with two items; one of them was reversely coded. For example, from the two questions; how positive was the experience and how negative was it? One total valence score was calculated (after recoding the negative item). The valence score was used to represent the affective quality and the emotional value of an experience for the participants, either on a positive or a negative way. Any questions should be skipped if the respondent can only think of one or two experiences. After every reported experience, the participants were asked to state their age at the time of the experience.
Sociodemographic variables
Finally, we collected socio-demographic data such as age and gender, school leaving certificates and professional qualifications with a self-designed questionnaire.
Procedure
For the data collection, we used an online questionnaire that provided a short introduction and informed the participants about the study. First, we measured participants’ current wellbeing including measures of life satisfaction, stress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem and resilience. Subsequently, the three most significant experiences with teachers in childhood and/or adolescence were reported and evaluated, as described above.
In order to make meaningful use of the participants’ experiences, it was necessary to divide them into different categories to ensure that the individual categories could be compared with each other and to relate the individual types of experiences to the collected variables. In this qualitative evaluation, a summarizing content analysis according to Mayring [31] was used. In the following section, the procedure of this method is described.
Statistical analysis
Qualitative content analysis
To divide the experiences into categories, a passage reading was first performed. On the first day of the content analysis each individual’s experience was read and assigned to a keyword. For example, if a subject reported particularly supportive behaviour on the part of his or her teacher, the researcher noted the keyword “support” for the experience. The keywords were collected in tabular form. The table had two columns, one for positive and the other for negative keywords, respectively. At the same time, we gave every experience a number, so we could note the number and the keyword of the experience in a second table. This way, we could ensure that we could still retrace how each experience was coded later. After coding every experience, the table with the positive and negative keywords was reviewed. While reading through the initial list of positive and negative keywords, it was noticeable that there were some experiences which no keywords were assigned to because they were either too short or consisted of only one word or a random sequence of letters. These records were therefore rated as unusable and invalid. In the next step, we also applied the changes to the table with the numbers of the experiences and their coding.
The next day, the second reading took place. There was a deliberate pause between reading pass one and reading pass two; this ensures that the descriptions already written down were not quite up to date in the researcher’s memories. The second reading and coding session was the same as the first one, and thereafter the first and the second lists were compared. We now checked whether there were differences between the coding of day one and two. If experiences were coded differently, the keywords were checked to see if they described similar behaviors on the part of the teacher or if they implied the same behavior. Significant differences were discussed and reflected on together and a consensus was reached. The next step in the qualitative part of the data evaluation was to combine the collected codes into supercategories. For this purpose, it had to be considered which keywords are similar or could be condensed and attributed to having similar behaviour. In this last step, it was possible to assign all experiences to different categories. These seven categories of experiences we find in our data are individual promotion and support, empathic behaviour, authenticity, unjust and degrading behaviour, physical violence, psychological violence, and sexual assault.
Quantitative analyses
SPSS 26.0 was used for all quantitative analyses. As a first step, we calculated the frequencies of each category of experiences and realized a first overview of the data. In order to determine the age structure of the reported experiences, the threshold values had to be calculated, then could the mean age of the participants be determined from all cases. In addition, the percentage shares, the cumulative percentages and the standard deviations were also determined.
The next step was to evaluate the positive and negative valence of the experiences. For this purpose, the questions were used to assess whether the experience was positive or negative for the participant. Furthermore, we evaluated the motivational- and the self-confidence enhancement of the experiences in the questionnaire and calculated the valences.
Subsequently, the data collected on life satisfaction, self-esteem, stress, depression, anxiety, and resilience were evaluated. These results are then compared against the evaluation of the experiences. However, to obtain results regarding the seven categories, further calculations had to be made. First, it was determined again for all three experiences, whether they were positive or negative. However, this was done by assigning them to specific categories. Categories one to three are positive, whereas categories four to seven are negative. The results of these categories were then correlated once more with the variables of life satisfaction, self-esteem, stress, depression, anxiety, and resilience.
In order to evaluate the contribution of the three characteristics of experiences (valence, motivating power, and increasing self-confidence) to well-being and resilience, regression analyses (backword method) were calculated, with the mean values (over three experiences) of valence, motivating power, and increasing self-confidence as predictors, and life satisfaction, self-esteem, total DASS-21, and resilience.
Another important step in the data evaluation was the analysis of variance. The current study was particularly interested in finding out whether the seven categories differ with regard to the variables of life satisfaction, self-esteem, stress, depression, anxiety, and resilience. These differences were illuminated using the analysis of variance and followed by a post-hoc test and testing for inter-subject effects.