Managing the Transition: The Role of Optimism and Self-Efficacy for First-Year Australian University Students

By Stephen Morton, A. Mergler, Peter Boman. 2014

106 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Students making the transition from high school to university often encounter many stressors and new experiences. Many students adjust successfully to university; however, some students do not, often resulting in attrition from the university and mental health issues. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the effects that optimism, self-efficacy, depression, and anxiety have on an individual's life stress and adaptation to university. Eighty-four first-year, full-time students from the Queensland University of Technology (60 female, 24 male) who had entered university straight from high school completed the study. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing their levels of optimism, self-efficacy, depression, anxiety, perceived level of life stress and adaptation to university. In line with predictions, results showed that optimism, depression, and anxiety each had a significant relationship with students’ perceived level of stress. Furthermore, self-efficacy and depression had a significant relationship with adaptation to university. We conclude that students with high levels of optimism and low levels of depression and anxiety will adapt better when making the transition from high school to university. In addition, students with high levels of self-efficacy and low levels of depression will experience less life stress in their commencement year of university. The implications of this study are outlined.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e8f58c9b0763d18ac92eacbaf094838a5b10b848

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Citations in the corpus

Domains and predictors of first-year student success: A systematic review (2018, background): “Morton, Mergler, and Boman (2014) found, with a medium effect size, that the belief that one is able to effectively manage difficult situations (coping self-efficacy) was related to students' first-year adjustment to university.”
Psychological Capital and Career Outcomes among Final Year University Students: the Mediating Role of Career Engagement and Perceived Employability (2020, background): “Indeed, self-efficacy has been found to be important in managing change situations (Vardaman et al. 2012) and particularly useful in adjusting during career transitions (Morton et al. 2014).”
Stress and Subjective Well-Being Among First Year UK Undergraduate Students (2016, unknown): “Other researchers report that academic self-efficacy is negatively associated with stress and positively associated with well-being in students (Chemers et al. 2001; Morton et al. 2014; Roddenberry and Renk 2010; Solberg et al. 1993).”