The Effect of Stress Inoculation Training on Students’ Academic Engagement: An Intermediary Role of Academic Stress and Academic Exhaustion

Academic engagement is crucial for the accomplishment of education and success in it, yet, with respect to existing challenges in the course of education, some students encounter with problems in this area. The main purpose of the present research is to promote academic engagement by using the stress inoculation training for students where academic stress and academic exhaustion play intermediary roles. For this purpose, we used a pretest-posttest design with a control group. 40 students were selected through a convenience sampling and randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group was trained for 8 sessions of 120 minutes each. The groups were evaluated at three stages: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. For data analysis, structural equation models with partial least squares approach were used in the form of the MIMIC model. The results showed that the stress inoculation training can firstly reduce academic exhaustion and academic stress significantly and in the second step can increase academic engagement indirectly and promote it. The follow-up model also confirmed these effects. In sum, the conceptual model of research explained 70% of academic engagement variance in the post-test phase as well as 38% in the follow-up phase which indicate the importance and effectiveness of Mindfulness Program.