Fostering Academic Engagement in Post-graduate Students: Assessing the Role of Positive Emotions, Positive Psychology, and Stress

Abstract

AimThe current study attempted to assess the effect of positive emotion on post-graduate students’ psychological capital (PsyCap) as well as on their academic engagement behavior. Also, the direct relationship between PsyCap and academic engagement behavior was assessed alongside the presence of Stress as a moderating variable between PsyCap and academic engagement behavior amongst post-graduate students in Malaysia.Materials and MethodsA self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection from 373 post-graduate Ph.D. students registered in various universities throughout Malaysia with a non-probabilistic sampling technique. Research respondents belonged to management, humanities, engineering, computer science, and health sciences domains, and they responded through a questionnaire copy. Statistically, structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to evaluate confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability analysis, validity analysis, measurement model, structural model, and path analysis. Furthermore, the (5000) bootstrapping approach was utilized to test the final model.ResultsFor the hypothesized model, our results confirmed that positive emotions had a positive and significant effect on students’ psychological capita as well as on their academic engagement behavior. Further, PsyCap also had a positive and significant effect on academic engagement behavior. Our results also reported that stress as a moderating variable has a negative and deteriorating effect on the relationship between PsyCap and the academic engagement of students.ConclusionThe study’s findings support the theoretical assumption that positive emotions help individuals generate cognitive resources, which in turn help them manage their engagement behavioral requirements. However, the stress caused by their study needs may deplete their psychological resources, consequently influencing their academic engagement behavior. Interventions like personal coaching/counseling, appropriate follow-up, and flexible goal settings with other measures may help post-graduate students in achieving their daunting tasks.

The relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and university students’ academic engagement: The mediating effect of emotional intelligence

“…Then, the SPSS Amos program (version 21.0) was used to evaluate the mediating effect of EI on BPNS and academic engagement. The present study is based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, which is a nominal research analysis approach ( Saleem et al, 2022 ). For the mediation analyses, a bootstrapping method was further used to obtain bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) with 5,000 re-samples.…”

“…Recently, facilitating engagement has also been revealed to reduce the adversarial impact of sociodemographic predictors on student performance ( Lei et al, 2018 ). So far, research have showed that both personal variables and social-contextual variables could influence the student’ academic engagement ( Patrick et al, 2007 ; Wu et al, 2010 ; Stoeber et al, 2011 ; King and Ganotice, 2014 ; Kilday and Ryan, 2019 ; MacCann et al, 2020 ; Virtanen et al, 2020 ; García-Martínez et al, 2022 ; Luo and Luo, 2022 ; Saleem et al, 2022 ).…”

“…The second reason is that, compared with other educational phase, although university students are not formally employed by the university, students’ studies are involved in coercive, structured tasks and activities (e.g., attending class, cooperating and competing with others, and submitting assignments), which makes academic engagement in university more similar with work ( Walker et al, 2006 ). For example, Saleem et al (2022) recently posited that post-graduate student’ s educational journey is much different than high-school students in terms of length of the degree, course work, examination, assessment, educational outcomes, teaching methodology, and so on.…”

Network analysis of affect, emotion regulation, psychological capital, and resilience among Chinese males during the late stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…POA “positive affect” was positively correlated with SEL “self-efficacy,” RES “resilience,” and OPT “optimism,” while NEA “negative affect” was negatively correlated with RES “resilience.” These results are consistent with a published study reporting that positive affect and PsyCap are positively associated, and that the opposite is true for the relation between negative affect and PsyCap ( 32 ). Other previous studies have also found that positive affect exerts a positive effect on PsyCap ( 77 , 78 ). In the fine-grained exploration of the pathways between affect and PsyCap carried out in the present study, positive affect was associated with self-efficacy.…”

An International Study of Correlates of Women’s Positive Body Image

“…Thus, programs offered at colleges and universities should aim to enhance these aspects of psychological health on the assumption that they are tightly interwoven and could facilitate students’ academic outcomes and overall well-being. The accumulation of positive psychological resources may not only help individuals to enhance their performance in academic setting [ 74 ] but also protect them against pathology [ 75 ]. By exploring individual inner qualities and strengths, the risk of students developing disorders that impact their academic career (such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders) could be minimized.…”