Understanding the Role of Academic Self-Efficacy, Social Support, and Anxiety in University Students’ Academic Resilience

Understanding the Role of Academic Self-Efficacy, Social Support, and Anxiety in University Students’ Academic Resilience

Regan Kelly

2020

Academic resilience can refer to a student’s response when they are faced with academic hinderances, such as lower than expected grades. Those with a high ability to bounce back from hinderances have previously been shown to perform well during exams and have more positive mental health outcomes. Whilst a number of research studies have attempted to explain the academic resilience of primary and secondary school students, the factors that underpin university students’ academic resilience remain unclear. Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate the extent to which both protective and risk factors underpin university students’ academic resilience. The variables explored include academic self-efficacy; social support; and anxiety. Participants (N = 246) were all university students in the United Kingdom and they completed four self-report measures online via Qualtrics. In line with the hypotheses, a series of zero-order correlations showed a negative association between anxiety and academic resilience, while both academic self-efficacy and social support positively correlated with academic resilience. A multiple linear regression showed that the three predictor variables significantly predicted academic resilience and accounted for 41% of the variance. The findings lend support to a number of other recent studies that have explored characteristics of students’ resilience. Furthermore, the current study applied a context-specific resilience and despite the use of just three predictor variables, the most variance was explained in the present study. Whilst the study does have useful directions for both educators and future research, the use of self-report scales to measure a range of psychological concepts, that individuals tend to see themselves in a favourable manner in, does limit the study’s validity.

academic reselience, self-efficacy, social support, anxiety, university students, multiple linear regression

Method
Participants
The sample consisted of 246 participants who were all students at universities in the U.K. After the exclusion of incomplete responses (N = 5); invalid responses to demographic questions (N = 1); and invalid ratings on scales (N = 7), the final sample consisted of 233 participants. There was 165 females and 68 males with ages ranging from 17 to 52 and the mean age was 24.3 years (SD = 4.8). Participants were primarily recruited through Facebook dissertation exchange groups and online participant recruiting software SONA was also used, thus a simple random sample was employed. To ensure the desired number of participants was reached, the chance to opt-in to a raffle draw for five £10 Amazon vouchers was offered to participants.
Measures
Academic Resilience. Consisting of 30 items and a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS-30; Cassidy, 2016) was used to measure academic resilience. On this measure, individuals read a short vignette and were asked to imagine themselves in the situation described. The vignette details how a student has recently received a number of poor grades and one fail and has subsequently received critical feedback. The items are presented as statements and these are grouped into three sub-scales (i.e., perseverance, reflecting and adaptive help-seeking, and negative affect), and consist of both positively (e.g., I would try to think of new solutions) and negatively phrased statements (e.g., I would just give up). A summed score of the three sub-scales was used as a measure of academic resilience in the present study and the scores can range from 30 to 150, with a high score reflecting a highly academically resilient individual.
Academic Self-Efficacy. Owen and Froman’s (1988) College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (CASES) was used to measure academic self-efficacy. This measure comprises of 33 items and individuals used a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very little) to 5 (quite a lot), to indicate how confident they feel when engaging in a range of behaviours at university (e.g., challenging a lecturer’s opinion in class). As this measure was originally intended for use with American students, certain words and phrases were altered to suit the present study’s sample who were all students in the U.K. For example, ‘professor’ became ‘lecturer’ and ‘math course’ was changed to ‘statistic module’. The scores on the CASES can range from 33 to 165, with a high score being indicative of those who are confident when completing academic tasks.
Anxiety. To measure the extent to which individuals worry about their academic performance, the anxiety sub-scale from the Motivation and Engagement Scale (MES; Martin, 2020) was used. This measure consists of four statements (e.g., when exams and assignments are coming up, I worry a lot) and individuals used a seven-point Likert scale to specify how much they agree with each statement, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Scores can range from 4 to 28 and a higher score is indicative of those who tend to worry about their academic performance. Variations of this measure are available for populations in primary, secondary, and higher education from the author.
Social Support. The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS; Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) was used to measure individuals’ perceptions of their social support. This measure consists of 12 items (e.g., I can talk about my problems with my friends) and a seven-point Likert scale is used, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The items can be divided into three sources of social support (family, friends, and significant other) and scores are produced for each grouping factor. However, in the present study an overall score of perceived social support was used and scores can range from 12 to 84 – with higher scores indicating greater perceived social support.
Procedure
A total of four self-report measures was used in the present study and these were presented online using the Qualtrics software. Participants were initially presented with the participant information sheet and consent form – for participants’ ease, both of these were presented on the same page so that when participants were completing the consent form, they could refer to the information sheet to read what their participation would entail. On the following page, demographic questions were collated regarding the participants’ age and sex. Next, the self-report measures were completed by participants. The anxiety, academic resilience, academic self-efficacy, and social support scales were presented in a fixed order and each scale was presented on separate screens. Once participants had completed all four measures, they were directed to the debrief sheet which provided some background to the present study and also included a link to a separate survey, whereby participants could enter the raffle draw by providing their personal details. Although each scale differed in terms of the number of items used, it generally took participants between seven and ten minutes to complete the study.
Design and Analysis
A correlational design was employed in the present study. A series of zero-order correlations between the dependent variable and each of the predictor variables were initially carried out, followed by a multiple regression analysis. The dependent variable was academic resilience and the predictor variables include academic self-efficacy, social support, and anxiety.

Lancaster University

RK Dissertation_August 8, 2020_07.57 inc. res reversed.csv

Regan2015

Aimee Fletcher
Eleni Gkari

Open

None

English

Data

LA14YF

Prof. Louise Connell

MSc

social

246 participants: 165 females and 68 males

multiple linear regression