Previous research has indicated that psychological health, academic self-efficacy, and academic stress are significant factors in the personal and academic lives of many college students. Each of these issues has been found to influence academic performance, adjustment to college, and many other aspects of students' lives. The impact that academic self-efficacy and academic stress have on psychological health has not been examined in detail however.
In this study, the researcher examined gender, academic self-efficacy, and academic stress as predictors of psychological health in college students. An online survey comprised of instruments assessing these variables was distributed to a sample of college students at one Midwestern university in the USA. The final sample size consisted of 146 participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to analyze the results, where gender was the first variable entered into the regression analysis, academic self-efficacy second, and academic stress was entered last as it was predicted to account for the most variation in psychological health scores.
The results of the analysis indicated that gender was not a significant predictor of psychological health in this sample. Academic self-efficacy and academic stress were both significant predictors of psychological health. Academic self-efficacy accounted for 12.6% of the variation in psychological health scores and academic stress accounted for an additional 11.7% of the variation in psychological health scores. Academic stress did not account for more variation than academic self-efficacy as was hypothesized. Academic stress was found to have a negative correlation with psychological health as expected, but academic self-efficacy also had a negative correlation with psychological health unexpectedly. These results are discussed and possible implications for counselors and others who work with college students are outlined. The limitations of the study and possible directions for future research on these topics are also detailed.