I'm Not Good for Anything and That's Why I'm Stressed: Analysis of the Effect of Self-Efficacy and Emotional Intelligence on Student Stress Using SEM and QCA.

Diego Navarro-Mateu,Selene Valero-Moreno,Lucía Alonso-Larza,Vicente Prado-Gascó,María Teresa Gómez-Domínguez

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00295

Diego Navarro-Mateu, Selene Valero-Moreno + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00295

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Abstract

Stress negatively affects the well-being and the quality of life of the society. Specifically in the academic context, it is relevant to analyze its levels due to its impact on performance and learning. There are factors that affect the said stress including, among others, self-efficacy, and emotional intelligence. The purpose of this study is to analyze how emotional intelligence and perceived self-efficacy affect student stress. In order to show this influence, two complementary methodologies are implemented: the structural equation models (SEMs) and the comparative qualitative analysis (QCA). A total of 477 students (85% of women) from a private University of Valencia participated in the study, with ages ranging from 18 to 53 years old (M = 21.57, SD = 3.68). The assessment instruments used were as follows: Emotional Intelligence Scale (TMMS-24) to measure emotional intelligence; General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSS) to measure self-efficacy; and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) to measure stress. The results in the SEM endorse the hypotheses that emotional clarity and self-efficacy are negatively related to stress and positively related to emotional attention (EA), explaining 25% of the variance. The QCA results show that none of the variables is a necessary condition for inducing stress. Nevertheless, different combinations of these variables are sufficient conditions to explain 35% of the high stress levels. The most important combination over high stress levels seems to be the interaction between high levels of EA and low levels of self-efficacy. Regarding the low levels of perceived stress, there are sufficient conditions to explain 50% of them. Mainly, the most important interaction is between low levels of self-efficacy and low levels of EA. The comparison of both methodologies enables the broadening of new horizons at the methodological level applicable to different contexts.

Highlights

The analysis showed that self-efficacy was positively and significantly related to emotional repair (ER) (r = 0.54; p = 0.02) and to emotional clarity (EC) (r = 0.50; p = 0.02), but it was not related to emotional attention (EA) (r = −0.01; p ≥ 0.05)
There are numerous studies that analyze strategies to cope with stressful situations in academic environments, all having in common the existence of variables that may modulate the response to the stressor, highlighting the emotional skills of the student (Aguilar et al, 2014; Bryant and Malone, 2015; Hodzic et al, 2016) as well as her belief of self-efficacy (Salanova et al, 2005; León-Rubio et al, 2011)
Even if none of the conditions are necessary for the perceived stress, there does appear to be two sufficient combinations that would explain 35% of the cases, one of them explaining that 29% is the interaction between high EA, low EC, and high self-efficacy and, high EA, high ER, and low EC with 29% of explained variance

Summary

Introduction

Stress refers to the manner in which an individual responds to certain environmental situations that overwhelm her and that she considers threatening (or intimidating), feeling that her well-being is compromised. It is not a uniform process, but rather an experience depending on the interaction of different factors. Among these factors, there are environmental conditions and individual traits, such as attitudes, motivations, emotional responses, and, the manner of dealing with situations (El-Ghoroury et al, 2012; Mahmoud et al, 2012; Boswell et al, 2013; Folkman, 2013; Gómez et al, 2014). Previous research show that academic stress may be present in the student at any stage of her academic life (Putwain, 2007), confirming its increase as the subject progresses academically and reaches higher levels, such as the university level, where the workload and responsibility, together with the changes that the student experiences in her life, generate an increase in academic stress (Berrio and Mazo, 2012)

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