The Mediating Role of Psychological Toughness in the Relationship between Religious Coping and Emotional Well-being in Nursing Students

One of the important areas of health and mental health of people in society is their emotional well-being experience, which is formed under the influence of several factors. The present study was conducted with the aim of examining the mediating role of psychological hardiness in the relationship between religious coping and emotional well-being of nursing students.

The current descriptive-correlational study involved the use of structural equation modeling and was conducted using the path analysis method. The research population included all the students of Qain School of Nursing and Midwifery in the academic year 2019-2020 (no=800), out of whom 180 were selected by available sampling method and completed online the Religious Coping Questionnaire by Pargament et al., Psychological Toughness Questionnaire by Kiamarei et al. and Keyes and Magyarmo’s Emotional Well-being Questionnaire. The relationships between the variables were analyzed by Pearson correlation test on SPSS software version 18 and the research model on Amos software. All ethical considerations were observed in this study, and the authors of the article declared no conflict of interest.

The results showed that positive religious coping (β=0.528, P<0.01) had a positive effect and negative religious coping (β=0.391, P<0.01) had a negative effect on psychological toughness. Positive religious coping affected emotional well-being both directly (β=0.329, P<0.01) and indirectly (β=0.153, P<0.01) through the mediation of psychological hardiness. Negative religious coping affected emotional well-being both directly (β=0.237, P<0.01) and indirectly (β=0.113, P<0.01) through the mediation of psychological toughness. Psychological hardiness had a direct positive effect on emotional well-being (β=0.289, P<0.01).

The findings show the importance of planning in order to improve psychological toughness and religious coping in promoting the emotional well-being of nursing students.