Academic Stress and Anxiety among Portuguese Students: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-Management

Abstract

Adolescents are experiencing increasing levels of anxiety and academic stress, with schools being privileged contexts to foster mental health literacy and hinder stress and anxiety. Social support and self-management skills have been described as protective factors for these phenomena. Therefore, this cross-sectional study examines the relations between social support, self-management skills, academic stress, and anxiety among adolescents, analyzing the mediational role of self-management in the relation between social support, academic stress, and anxiety. Participants included 137 adolescents, with an average age of 12.56 years (SD = 0.68), who completed the Perception of Academic Stress Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, Self-Control and Self-Management Scale, Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale, and a sociodemographic questionnaire. Results showed that students generally perceive moderate levels of social support from parents, teachers, and peers; moderate levels of academic stress and mild anxiety; and have self-management skills. Findings showed that self-management is related to social support, academic stress, and anxiety, with gender influencing academic stress and anxiety. Self-management was found to mediate the link between social support, academic stress, and anxiety. The results underscore the importance of fostering social support and self-management skills to mitigate academic stress and anxiety.

The Mediating Effect of Digital Literacy and Self-Regulation on the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Stress among University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study.

“…Studies have indicated that undergraduate healthcare students have a higher score of emotional intelligence when assessed using the same measurement scale SSREIT [33] [55] . Furthermore, our study found that students experience a moderate level of stress, which aligns with a previous study that deployed the same PAS scale to measure academic stress in adolescents [45]. These ndings are in the same vein with a study carried out in Morocco by Ksiksou et al in 2023, which found that nursing students with high emotional intelligence and moderate stress levels had positive correlations between their perceived stress and emotional intelligence [52].…”

“…Statements 5,9,12,13 and 15 are on a reversed scale, with "strongly agree" equaling 1 and "strongly disagree" equaling 5. Felipe and Tatiane (2021) and Pontes et al (2023) reported high internal consistency (α= 0.83) and (α= 0.75) respectively [44] [45]. The overall Cronbach's alpha coe cient α in the study was 0.718, and Cronbach's alpha for the three subdomains were as follow: academic expectations (4 items; α= 0.789), workload and examinations (8 items; α= 0.866), and students' academic self-perceptions (6 items; α= 0.798).…”

“…A sizable number of studies have shown that self-regulation and the ability to manage one's own behavior can assist learners in coping with academic stress, thus preventing long-term negative consequences [44]. Many research articles have demonstrated a negative association between academic stress and self-regulation among undergraduate students [44] [45] [46] [37]. Furthermore, research has indicated that self-regulation has an important in uence on emotional intelligence and vice versa [47].…”