Abstract
This research comprehensively examines the relationship between academic self-efficacy and perceived stress, and how the two concepts are of effect to the academic performance. A survey instrument was developed to measure the perceived stress and self-efficacy connected to the college related tasks. The study examined 182 students from the Campbelltown and Parramatta campuses of the University of Western Sydney that were involved in the study of the Organizational Behavior. The study involved both males (105) and females (76). Both scales proved to be highly reliable with the correlation being moderately negative. The structural equation models were estimated for the assessment of the relative importance of self-efficacy and stress in prediction of the academic effects. The results clearly proves self-efficacy to be a more consistent and robust predictor of academic success in comparison to perceived stress.
Introduction
Although the rate of post-secondary enrolment has increased in Sidney, it has also been apparent that the rate of unsuccessful performance has remained as a persisting problem among the undergraduates. Worse still, these enrolments are not well reflected in the future occupational areas where these students have been expected to portray their expertise and diverse knowledge acquired in education through high performances. These academics have also been characterized by high rates of attrition which has further been a complication to the planning for enrolment (Lloyd, Tienda, and Zajacova, 2001). It also poses as a burden to the recruitment effort for new students who are expected to be resourceful in organizations. Modern organizations are seeking for graduates that can creatively apply their well acquired post-high school knowledge and skills for the organizational success. However, this is unlikely to be achieved considering the trend in which these academic institutions are graduating inefficient and life stressed and unproductive individuals.
Many studies try to anticipate what individual factors lead to enhanced performance, both in the academic area as well as in the workplace. One of the individual factors that leads to enhanced performance is that of self-efficacy, that is, a belief in one‘s own abilities to perform a given task. Another individual factor is that of emotional intelligence which can be briefly described as understanding and regulating emotions in yourself as well as those of others. However, few studies have examined the relationships between self-efficacy and perceived stress.
This study also examines how self-efficacy and stress are perceived to affect the academic performances. These constructs have intensively been examined as academic adjustment predictors but the focus of this study will be to examine their relationship and relative importance of these constructs when it comes to enhancing academic performance in colleges. The new instruments employed will assess both perceived stress and self-efficacy in relation to the college tasks. This allows for a comparison that is more direct between the two constructs.
The study will mainly focus on examining how the two factors relatively affects the academic performance in the population of nontraditional and minority university students. Basically, nontraditional student is understood to be the older students, enrolled for part-time classes and is currently independent financially (NCES, 2002). In addition, the difficulties connected to low academics performance have been inexplicably focused among nontraditional learners. Therefore also accounting for the majority in the metropolitan areas, there has been limited studies targeting on this category. Therefore, it would be important to focus the attention on the academic performance on this college population that has been spelled as disadvantaged.
Self-efficacy
According to an explanation provided in Rathi and Rastogi (2008), self-efficacy is perceived to be the process in which an individual’s confidence is self-evaluated. This enhances successful execution of the necessary course of action through which the desired outcome can be reached. Zimmerman (2000) has perceived this concept to be a multidimensional idea whose variation depends on the demands domain.
Therefore, Zimmerman (2000) emphasizes on the need for evaluating this paradigm at a specific level to the domain outcome. Hence based on the academic settings, the academic self-efficacy should be measured as opposed to the generalization. Academically, self-efficacy is perceived to be the confidence which enhances the students’ ability to implement their academic tasks such as writing dissertation and preparation for the examinations. A large meta-analysis for the self-efficacy studies in high schools perceives specific self-efficacy to strongly affect the outcomes in academics (Lindley & Bogern, 2002). The general self-efficacy is hardly perceived to predict the outcomes in colleges (Lindley & Bogern, 2002). On the other side, the academic self-efficacy is perceived to be a predictor in college persistence and grades.
According to a study conducted by an extensive body of research, academic self-efficacy has been perceived to positively correlate with the college grades and persistence (Bong, 2001). The same author explains that with the belief in self-efficacy, the college outcomes are affected through triggering increasing motivation in the students and persistence when it comes to mastering the academic tasks. This fosters utilization of the attained skills and knowledge. Torres and Solberg (2001) perceive academic self-efficacy to be positively correlated with the duration spent while studying.
Perceived stress
Panda (2008) explains perceived stress to be the psychological arousal state resulting from the exceeding of the external demands to the ability of the person to adapt. The author labels the external demands as the stressors that can take various forms. The author perceives the stress to be a factor through which the college persistence is negatively affected. However, there are various studies that have not been able to connect the relationship between the stress and the academic performance. For instance, in Chemers and colleagues (2001), the life-events are not perceived to be predictors of the college student performance. Sandler (2000) also concludes that stress hardly predicts the period of time that the students are going to remain in school.
Relationship between self-efficacy and stress
Stress and self-efficacy are concepts with a close relationship. According to the cognitive stress model, self-efficacy; which is a personal belief, is perceived to be important in evaluation of the environmental demands (Chemers et al., 2001). Chemers and colleagues (2001) have evaluated the external demand as a “challenge” or “threat”. In addition, the self-efficacy exposed persons are perceived to evaluate the challenge in demand. This implies that the extent of confidence in a person when it comes to the handling of a certain situation affects their perception of a certain tasks; whether the task will be perceived as threatening or stressful as opposed to being perceived a challenging.
When upraising a task as challenging, an effective coping strategy is likely to be selected coupled with persistence in task management. Therefore, self-efficacy is perceived to affect the external demands perception (Gundlach, Martink & Douglas, 2003) hence interceding a connection between the psychological stress and external stressors.
Incorporating the model of path analysis, Chemers and colleagues (2001) have established the academic stress effects to be mediated by demands evaluations on the basis of being a challenge or threat. From another perspective, the state of psychological arousal that has been connected with anxiety and stress provides the information that tends to affect the self-efficacy conclusions. Correspondingly Luszczynska and colleagues (2005) insist that as a result of anxiety and self-efficiency, the students’ self-efficacy judgments may be depressed.
Thus according to hypothesis of the cognitive model, there is a strong negative correlation between the perceived stress and self-efficacy. This hypothesis is supported by the empirical findings. In relation to various previously conducted studies, stress and self-efficacy has been perceived to depict a negative correlation (Torres & Solberg, 2001). While the coherent framework is provided by the social cognitive model through which the stress and self-efficacy is linked, most of the previous studies have dwelled on exploring their individual roles when it comes to understanding the outcomes in academics. Therefore, there has been very little work on how the two jointly influence the college academic excellence. Torres and Solberg (2001) has highlighted self-efficacy and perceived stress as the grade point average (GPA) predictors for the students on undergraduate enrolment. In this study, the good grades were observed to have an association with high self-efficacy and low perceived stress. Drawing a specific focus on performance in mathematics lesson, the findings by (Torres and Solberg, 2001) observed the lesson to have a strong influence from self-efficacy. Anxiety in math was observed to only affect the performance through its connectedness to the self-efficacy. In a study conducted in younger students, both self-efficacy and stress were perceived to have a significant correlation to English performance. However, the stronger predictor was perceived to be self-efficacy. According to the findings of these studies, self-efficacy is somewhat observed to be a better academic success predictor in comparison to stress.
In relation to the previously reviewed studies, the evaluation of the two constructs was done in relation to varying tasks. They hardly dwell on evaluating the reported stress in the students in regards to; for instance, inquiry through classroom questions and evaluation of the self-efficacy in the students. This results in a problematic comparison of their direct effects. This paper mainly contributed by evaluating how the two constructs relate and their effect to the academic performance. Hence, this allowed the researcher to draw a closer comparison of how these two constructs are relatively important for the academics success of the students in a more advanced way in comparison to what has been done by the previous studies.
Research question
The following research question guides our research: What is the relationship between perceived stress and self-efficacy. As a result, the study expects to establish a negative correlation. This will imply that college demand is successfully mediated by self-efficacy and reduced perceived stress is the result. The second and equally important research question seeks to evaluate the relative effects of stress and self-efficacy on the academic outcome.
Therefore for the study hypothesis, both academic self-efficacy and perceived stress will affect the outcome. It is hypothesized that with lower stress level and higher self-efficacy levels, the associated grades will be better.
Method
The available data for the Research Report came from 182 participants who were students studying Organizational Behavior from both the Campbelltown and Parramatta campuses of the University of Western Sydney. There were 105 males (57.7%) and 76 females (41.8%) and where one person (.5%) did not give this information. The mean age of the participants was 21.3 years with a standard deviation of 4.12. There was missing data from 4 (2.20%) of the participants for age.
Results
The participants’ average age in the study is insignificantly different (p-0.13) from the average entrants of the academic year 2010-2011. In addition, the study does not exhibit a significant difference between the proportion of women and proportion of the whole population.
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations (an indication of how far the scores deviated from the mean/average) for male and female participants. Note that as aforementioned there were no significant differences between males and females on any of the measures.
Discussion
The study was aimed at examining the relationship between the academic self-efficacy and the perceived stress and the effect on the success in the academics for college students in Campbelltown and Parramatta campuses of the University of Western Sydney. To enhance a closer examination of the relative influence exhibited by the two paradigms, a new survey instrument was developed for the measurement of the stress and self-efficacy in respect to the tasks related to college. Through these measures, we are able to comprehensively explore how the paradigm affects the students’ grades and college persistence.
Both scales have a high internal reliability. As expected, the self-efficacy and perceived stress exhibited a negative correlation between the tasks pairs with a range of negative 0.27 and negative 0.71. With this inverse association which is moderately high, there is a confirmation of Torres and Solberg (2001) findings. In each scale, there was an independent performance of a factor analysis. This is dependable on the self-efficacy domain specificity. Further support is offered to the strong relationship of perceived stress and self-efficacy based on the fact that both scales are factoring into the same components.
According to the findings, there is a positive relationship between the three academic success measures. There is a positive correlation between the number of scored credits and the enrolment at the beginning of the year even after the control of the characteristics of the demographic background in the students. The scoring of the fulltime students are higher coupled with a higher possibility of remaining in the enrollment. This finding is supported by the previous studies which have observed a higher attrition rate in the part time students (NCES, 2002). This study also observed a positive relationship between the persistence and grade (NCES, 2002).
Basically, explanation of the variation in the persistence and number of credits has not been fully evaluated. There is a possibility of these two outcomes to be largely determined by the factors that are not incorporated in our model, such as the tuition affordability and motivation of continually remaining enrolled. Similarly, the older undergraduates are likely to be less predictable in terms of persistence (NCES, 2002).
This study also sought to understand the self-efficacy and perceived stress relative efficiency when it comes to prediction of the academic outcomes. Academic self-efficacy is found to strongly affect the students’ credits and grades. These findings are in compliance with the previous studies. For instance basically, self-efficacy is perceived to be the sturdiest predictor in all the simulations even when incorporating the pre-college excellence and demographic background variables.
Self-efficacy is established to negatively affect the decision of remaining in the enrolment. The expectation was that based on the fact that minority dominates most of the student population and therefore there is a high risk of experiencing stressful moments, an important academic outcome predictor would be the perceived stress. The stress did not exhibit a significant relationship with the college performance.
In contrast, some evidence are unfolded that stress has a positive relationship (although marginally) with the persistence. This finding was unforeseen. According to the previous studies, no effect has been shown on persistence resulting from stress (Sandler, 2000). Maybe the expected stress effect was not found because differentiation was not carried out between the threat appraisals and challenge. This assessment is important although in most instances it has been neglected based on the fact that the variation between the threat appraisal and challenge can end up in various coping approaches. As a result, this would imply correspondingly different variations in the academic results.
Therefore, the future studies should mainly focus on a more close investigation of the challenge or threat appraisals of the college linked tasks. For instance, the tasks would be rated by the students not only on the basis of the scale such as “stressful” scale but also inclusion of scales such as “challenging”, and “threatening”.
Conclusion
This study examined the relationship between self-efficacy and perceived stress and the effect on the academic performance. This article has justified the hypothesis that indeed there is a negative correlation between the self-efficacy and the perceived level of stress. The results also perceive the self-efficacy as more important in comparison to the perceived stress when it comes to academic performance prediction. The perceived stress is however observed to be more important when it comes to accounting for the successive enrolment. This conclusion supports the findings of the general literature trend. From the findings, the importance of self-efficacy is underlined when it comes to moderation of the stressors effect on the perceived stress for the students in colleges.
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