Refinement and Validation of an Awareness Training Program

Refinement and Validation of a Military Emotional Intelligence Training Program

The goal of the proposed project is to provide the Army with a brief, well-validated, internet-based training program for enhancing Awareness Training and resilience skills. This project will address the needs outlined for the Military Operational Medicine Research Program, particularly with regard to enhancing Psychological Health and Resilience. The fundamental approach of the project directly addresses the need to "develop psychological resilience among Service members and families to promote well-being and prevent behavioral health outcomes." Addressing this need is crucial, as military personnel are often required to serve under dangerous and emotionally stressful conditions. Prolonged stress or exposure to very intense life threatening experiences, such as those encountered in combat or other hazardous duty deployments can increase the risk of developing mental health problems including depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One possible way to minimize the effects of these stressful experiences on Service members is to strengthen their emotional flexibility, adaptability, and capacity to cope with adversity before they find themselves faced with such situations. To fill this need, the investigators propose to provide the military with a web-based program that focuses on enhancing Awareness Training, a core set of trainable awareness skills that collectively include the capacity to understand, perceive, control, and use emotions effectively.

While the previous pilot program was successful in some ways, it needs further research before it is ready for widespread use. The investigators therefore propose to build upon the existing strengths already in the program and redesign the weaker modules to be more effective. Over the course of a four-year study, the investigators propose to develop this program. The proposed Awareness Training program is brief, web-based, easily accessible, and sufficiently focused such that it could be completed by large numbers of military personnel with minimal time burden, leading to rapid enhancement of awareness skills. Such a program could have a significant effect in promoting resilience, interpersonal functioning, and brain health among Service members and their families, while reducing the likelihood of mental health problems among those returning from exposure to potentially traumatic experiences.

The central hypothesis is that a set of well designed and targeted training modules addressing core awareness ability domains will significantly enhance measured awareness skills, will translate into improved performance on militarily relevant metrics, and will lead to better mental and emotional health, as well as well being during stressful situations and subsequent cognitive processing.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Awareness Training
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Internal Awareness Training Program; Other: External Awareness Training Program

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 1266
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Arizona
    • Tucson, Arizona, United States, 85724
      • University of Arizona
    • Tucson, Arizona, United States, 85724
      • University of Arizona Psychiatry Department

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 45 years (Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• English as a primary language

Exclusion Criteria:

• History of neurological illness, current DSM-5 Axis I disorder
• Traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness greater than 30 minutes

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Double

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Healthy Subjects- Awareness Training Group 1; Subjects in this arm will undergo an internal awareness training program.	Other: Internal Awareness Training Program
Experimental: Healthy Subjects - Awareness Training Group 2; Subjects in this arm will undergo an external awareness training program.	Other: External Awareness Training Program

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Time Frame
Change in Mayer-Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)	Measured before and after the Awareness Training Program is given on Day 1

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: William D. Killgore
• Collaborators: United States Department of Defense

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 1, 2021
• Study Completion (Actual): November 1, 2021

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 1, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 28, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): March 29, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): September 14, 2022
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 13, 2022
• Last Verified: September 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 1607696724