Art-based Beauty Appreciation Intervention

The Engagement with Beauty Scale Revised (EBS-R) is an 18-item self-report scale designed to assess cognitive and emotional engagement with natural beauty, artistic beauty, moral beauty, and beautiful ideas. Participants respond on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very unlike me) to 7 (very much like me). Example items include reflections on physiological responses to natural beauty, the spiritual experience elicited by art, and the desire for personal growth through moral beauty appreciation. Subscales measure engagement with moral beauty (scores 6-42) and the other three domains (scores 4-28), contributing to a total score ranging from 18 to 126.

We will measure well-being using the Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF). This has 14 items over three subscales: emotional well-being, social well-being (eudemonic well-being), and psychological well-being. The items are scored on a 6-point Likert scale (0-5), then sum-scored.

The DASS-21 will be used to measure psychological distress. It has 21 items divided over three subscales of 7 items each. These capture emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress. The items are assessed using a four-point Likert scale (0-3), summed together, and multiplied by two. This results in three subscales and a total score.

The Emotion Regulation Strategies for Artistic Creative Activities Scale (ERS-ACA; Fancourt et al., 2019) will be used with slight modification to the question stem. While the initial purpose of this scale was geared towards creative pursuits, it has been rooted in the principles of emotion regulation theory and designed to be applied to various activities. We anticipate that it will be a valuable instrument in evaluating how appreciating beauty can regulate emotions. This change in the question stem concerns the use of the prompt, "When I am appreciating beauty…". Items can be added up to avoidance strategies (i.e., I can block out unwanted thoughts or feelings), approach strategies (i.e., it makes me reflect on my emotions), and self-development strategies (i.e., it reaffirms my identity).

Attention regulation will be assessed using the 20-item Attention Control Scale (ACS) (Derryberry & Reed, 2002). The questionnaire consists of 2 subscales: (1) Attention Focusing and (2) Attention Shifting. The items are assessed on a four-point Likert scale (1-4) and will be sum-scored.

Mindfulness will be assessed using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Short Form (FFMQ-15), with 15 items (Baer, Carmody, & Hunsinger, 2012), with five facets: (1) observing, (2) describing, (3) acting with awareness, (4) non-judging, and (5) non-reactivity (Baer et al., 2006). The items are assessed on a five-point Likert scale (1-5) from rarely to always. Scores will be summed for each facet and the total score.

Burnout will be measured using the Burnout Assessment Tool-12 (BAT-12), consisting of 12 items (Redelinghuys & Morgan, 2023; Schaufeli et al., 2020). This questionnaire measures burnout with four subscales: (1) Exhaustion, (2) Mental Distance, (3) Emotional Impairment, and (4) Cognitive Impairment (Schaufeli et al., 2020). The items are assessed on a five-point Likert scale (1-5). A total score can be obtained by calculating all items' average scores. Additionally, subscale scores are obtained by calculating the average of the items per subscale.

Semi-structured interview focusing on the impacts of intervention, mechanisms, barriers and facilitators.