The mediating role of students’ academic resilience in the relationship between self‑efficacy and test anxiety

There is growing acknowledgment that medical education can be a stressful experience for students and may have a devastating effect on their psychological well‑being. The present article, therefore, aimed at investigating students’ academic resilience as a mediating variable in self‑efficacy‑test anxiety relation.

In this cross‑sectional correlational study, a convenience sample of 243 medical students was selected and participated, three prevalidated questionnaires were applied, that is, general self‑efficacy questionnaire, academic resilience questionnaire, and test anxiety questionnaire. To analyze the data, Pearson’s correlation coefficient as well as structural equation modeling (SEM) were used.

According to Pearson’s coefficients, self‑efficacy was found to be positively correlated with academic resilience (r = 0.437, P ≤ 0.01) and negatively with test anxiety (r = −0.475, P ≤ 0.01). SEM results also indicated that self‑efficacy positively impacts on academic resilience (β = 0.43, P < 0.001) and negatively on test anxiety (β = −0.37, P < 0.001). In addition, results demonstrated the mediating role of academic resilience in self‑efficacy‑test anxiety relationship (β = −0.108, P < 0.001).

This study showed that academic resilience could play a mediating role in students’ self‑efficacy‑test anxiety relationship.