key: cord-0935988-1lifgxqb authors: Rahe, Martina; Jansen, Petra title: Understanding the Relationship between Perceived Stress and Academic Motivation in College Students during the Coronavirus Pandemic date: 2021-12-10 journal: Int J Educ Res Open DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedro.2021.100109 sha: a43bce4ba512fac2d5abebe787a900e5ffbea141 doc_id: 935988 cord_uid: 1lifgxqb The Coronavirus Pandemic has influenced the life of many people. We analyzed the effects of physical activity and stress on students’ motivation during the Pandemic. Participants were 254 university students who reported their academic motivation, physical activity, general stress, strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic, and their Coronavirus stress. Women reported higher levels of Coronavirus stress, general stress, and motivation. The Coronavirus stress was predicted by the strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic but not by physical activity. Mastery goals were predicted by the general stress and gender and performance goals were predicted by the general stress. Physical activity could not explain any incremental variance of students’ motivation during the Pandemic. Higher levels of general stress were associated with a higher academic motivation. Negative emotions like stress could have enhanced students’ motivation during uncertain times of the Pandemic. Moreover, a moderate level of stress could be favorable for academic dedication and achievement. The Coronavirus-Pandemic has changed the life of almost every person and influenced their subjective well-being at some point (Zacher & Rudolph, 2021) . Whereas life satisfaction did not change in the early beginning of the Pandemic from December 2019 to March 2020 in a German sample, it decreased in a later phase between March and May 2020. Furthermore, personal well-being during the Coronavirus Pandemic could be predicted among others through general life satisfaction and gratitude (Büssing et al., 2020) . The Coronavirus Pandemic has also especially affected students in higher education. Those institutions are mainly closed, and distance teaching has been installed. In one study, 86.8% of students reported that the pandemic has significantly impacted their studies, 65.3% reported low or very low well-being (Dodd et al., 2021) . Even there is a lot of research coming up, investigating the relation of the perceived stress during the Coronavirus Pandemic and wellbeing, no study has investigated the relation of the perceived stress during the Pandemic and academic motivation. In several meta-analyses (e.g., Möller et al., 2009) it has been stated that students' motivational beliefs are related to their academic achievement. A social-cognitive approach to motivation emphasizes the students' belief of actual events as well as the role of achievement context. According to Steinmayr et al. (2019) , a variety of motivation constructs can be organized in the category of expectancy components and the category of value components. In line with the social cognitive perspective, students' motivation is relatively situation specific. Next to this, a more traditional personality model of motivation, the theory of achievement motivation exists (McClelland et al., 1953) , where motivation is seen as a more stable concept. Two achievement motives are hope for success and fear of failure. These achievement motives were also considered in the achievement goal theory. First, there was a differentiation between mastery (focusing on intrinsic values associated with learning) and performance goals, by doing better than others (Ames, 1992) . Moreover, the mastery as well as the performance goals could be split in approach and avoidance including the valence of the goals (Elliot & McGregor, 2001 ). To our best knowledge, there are only a few studies which have investigated the relation between perceived stress and academic motivation, as for example in the study of Liu (2015) : The perceived stress at grade 10 in high school negatively predicted the intrinsic motivation and positively the amotivation at grade 12. In another study, one hundred sixty medical students completed among others stress scales, depression scale and an academic motivation scale. A path analysis demonstrated that stress, motivation, and academic performance were sequentially associated with each other (Park et al., 2012) . So, one implication was that stress is negatively associated with motivation in students from a university, in this case in medical students from Korea. The number of studies which focus on the well-being of students in the Coronavirus Pandemic is growing. Husky et al. (2020) demonstrated that two thirds of students reported an increase in anxiety during the confinement as well as moderate to severe levels of stress. In another study from France, the prevalence of severely perceived stress was 22%. The presence of someone's hospitalized for COVID-19 in one's household and to be female, were the main predictors for the perceived stress (Bourion-Bedes et al., 2021) . Some studies about the well-being of students in the Coronavirus Pandemic are related to physical activity: Wilson et al. (2021) reported a significant decline in physical activity and an increased stress during the Coronavirus Pandemic in students from a Northeastern University. Furthermore, in a study with students from the USA it was shown that the total minutes of physical activity are related to positive affect (measured with the positive and negative affect scale) before and during the stay-at-home orders. This relation was neither moderated by stressful live events (Maher et al., 2021) nor by sleep quality, food insecurity and demographic factors. The studies mentioned above have shown on the one hand that students at university suffer from the Coronavirus Pandemic from stress, and on the other hand that reduced physical activity can predict the levels of stress in the Coronavirus Pandemic of university students (Moriarty et al., 2021) . Furthermore, stress seemed to be negatively related to academic motivation (Park et. al., 2012) . According to this, the following hypotheses could be formulated: 1. The perceived Coronavirus stress is predicted by the physical activity, the gender, and the strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic in university students. 2. It is assumed, that the academic motivation is predicted by the perceived Coronavirus stress and its relating factors (gender, physical activity, perceived general stress, strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic, including two possible interactions between gender and perceived Coronavirus stress (see Bourion-Bedes et al., 2021) , physical activity and perceived Coronavirus stress). 3. It must be to investigate exploratorily if the relation between the perceived Coronavirus stress and the academic motivation is moderated by the level of physical activity under the consideration of covariates. Assuming a small to moderate effect-size of f² = .10 in multiple regression analyses for the criterion academic motivation including seven predictors (gender, physical activity, coronavirus stress, strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic, perceived stress and two possible twoway interactions) variables with a power of .95 at an alpha level of .05, a sample size of n = 226 must be recruited. In this study 254 students participated, 152 female students (M = 21.27, SD = 2.66) and 102 male students (M = 22.16, SD = 2.39) from two Universities in Germany. 19 of them went through a COVID-infection, 148 students reported that a family member or a close friend suffered from an infection and 85 were already vaccinated. The study was conducted according to the declaration of Helsinki. All participants were informed of the goal and the anonymity of the study and the anonymity of the data storage. Furthermore, information was provided of the right to refuse to participate in the study or to withdraw consent to participate at any time without reprisal. All participants gave their informed consent prior to inclusion in the study in the online survey. The study was preregistered at https://osf.io/mfwhz. Data is available at https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https%3A%2F%2Fosf.io%2F26qy3%2Fdownload In this demographic questionnaire the following questions were asked: age; gender; Have you had a Covid-infection (yes, no)? Did one or more of your family members or close Achievement Goal Questionnaire-Revised (AGQ, Elliot & McGregor, 2001) . A German version of the AGQ with six mastery goal items (e.g., "My aim is to completely master the material presented in this class") and six performance goal items ("My aim is to avoid doing worse than other students") was used. Answering format was a 7-point Likert-scale ranging from 1 (not true at all) to 7 (exactly true). Mastery goals and performance goals showed good internal consistencies (Cronbach's Alpha > .80) (Elliot & McGregor, 2001) . The present study revealed Cronbach's Alpha = .80 for the total scale and .88 (performance goals) and .67 (mastery goals) for the subscales. Covid-19 Student Stress Questionnaire (CSSQ, Zurlo et al., 2020) . This is a 7 item Stress Questionnaire for students in the Coronavirus Pandemic. One example item is: "How do you perceive your academic studying experience during this period of COVID-19 pandemic?". Participants must answer each item on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (not at all stressful) to 5 (extremely stressful). The questionnaire revealed a satisfactory internal consistency International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ, Research Committee, 2005) . This is a questionnaire for the registration of the physical activity in the last seven days. It includes seven items, how many days in intensive, moderate and while walking they have spent and how many hours and minutes they have experienced with the specific intensity. The overall activity was measured in MET-minutes per week by the sum of the: Total MET-minutes/week = Mod (METs*min*days) + Vig (METs*min*days) with Moderate Intensity = 4.0 METs and Vigorous Intensity = 8.0 METs. An email with the studies' link was sent out. The online questionnaire was implemented using SoSci Survey (Leiner, 2019) and made available to the participants (www.soscisurvey.de). First, all participants gave their informed consent and reported their gender and age. Afterwards, they answered the questions concerning the Coronavirus Pandemic (e.g., strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic) and filled out the PSQ (Fliege et al., 2001) , AGQ (Elliot & McGregor, 2001) , IPAQ-SF, and the CSSQ (Zurlo et al., 2020) . They were then thanked for their participation. Data collection took place from May, 18 th -23 rd 2021. First, it was analyzed with correlation analyses and independent t-tests if the perceived general stress and the perceived Coronavirus stress are correlated and differ between those who were vaccinated or not and those who had a family member or close friend who underwent a Coronavirus infection. Also, the possible influence of gender was examined in four univariate Analyses of Variance. Those first analyses were in addition to the analyses described in the preregistration. Second, a hierarchical regression analysis with the criterion "perceived Coronavirus stress" and the possible predictors: physical activity, gender, and strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic has been calculated. After this, hierarchical regression analyses with the criterion "academic motivation" for both dependent variables "mastery goals" and "performance goals" and the possible predictors (Coronavirus stress, gender, perceived stress, strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic, physical activity, including two possible interactions (gender and perceived Coronavirus stress and physical activity and perceived Coronavirus stress) has been calculated. Lastly, it was analyzed if the general perceived stress and the Coronavirus stress are related to academic motivation and moderated by physical activity and possible co-variates. For this the Process Analysis of Hayes (2018) was used. The perceived general and the specific Coronavirus stress were highly correlated ( A hierarchical regression analysis was calculated with Coronavirus stress as criterion. As predictors, gender was added in the first step because gender differences were significant Annotations. *p<.05, **p <. 01, ***p < .001 The prediction of academic motivation was analyzed for performance and mastery goals separately. Hierarchical regression analyses were calculated with performance and mastery goals as criterion, respectively. Because gender differences were significant, gender was added as a predictor in a first step. Significant correlations were found between the perceived stress and the performance goals (r(254) = .220, p < .001) and mastery goals (r(254) = .313, p < .001) and between the Coronavirus stress and the mastery goals (r(254) = .186, p = .003) but not between the Coronavirus stress and the performance goals (r(254) = .083, p = .189). A moderation analysis was run to determine whether the interaction between perceived Coronavirus stress and physical activity under the consideration of the co-variate gender significantly predicts mastery goals. The overall model was significant, F(4, 249) = 2.973, p < .001, predicting 4.56% of the variance. Results show that physical activity did not moderate the effect between the perceived Coronavirus stress and mastery goal ΔR² = .004, F(1, 249) = 1.081, p = .743. If two moderator analyses were run with the perceived general stress and the mastery and performance goal motivation, no moderating effect of physical activity could be demonstrated. Our results show that the hypotheses 1 is only partly confirmed. The Coronavirus stress is predicted by the subjective strain of the Pandemic. Furthermore, hypothesis 2 is also only partly confirmed: The academic motivation is predicted by gender but this relation is fully mediated by the perceived general stress for the performance goals and partially mediated by the perceived stress for mastery goals. Physical activity does not moderate the relation between the perceived stress and the academic motivation. Our results show that the subjective measurement of the strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic predicted the perceived Coronavirus stress, whereas gender and the amount of physical activity did not have a significant influence. However, even gender does not predict the Coronavirus stress when the strain of the Coronavirus Pandemic is taken into account, there are significant gender differences in this specific type of stress. This in in line with the study of Bourion-Bedes et al. (2021) who demonstrated that women suffer more from the Pandemic than men. Even both studies differ in several aspects, as the country (France vs. Germany) and the time of the investigation (first Coronavirus Pandemic wave in the study of Bourion-Bedes vs. third wave in the study presented here), the gender effect of the higher stress for women than for men appeared in both studies. This is also in line with a study of Garcia-Fernandez et al. (2021) who showed that men experienced less stress than women during the first wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Spain. In their study a marginally significant interaction between the gender and the co-existence (living alone versus with other people) appeared. The difference in the stress measurement between men and women living alone was more than twice compared to the difference between those who did not live alone. A higher stress of female nurses compared to male nurses during the first Coronavirus Pandemic wave could also be confirmed in a study with nursing students in Turkey (Aslan & Pekince, 2021) . The higher perceived general stress of women compared to men is well known and may be attributed to the gender difference in worry-disposition (Schulz, Schlotz, Wolf, & Wüst, 2002) . Interestingly, in the study of Aslan and Pekince (2021) , gender also predicted among other factors the perceived stress during the Coronavirus Pandemic, which was not the case in our study. In our study only the experienced strain predicted the perceived Coronavirus strain, which means that the subjective evaluation more than objective categories like gender or the amount of physical activity is related to the feeling of being stressed in the University students. Academic motivation is predicted by gender but is fully or partly mediated by the perceived stress. All other predictors were not significant. Until now less is known about possible gender differences in academic motivation. In a study with students from a Turkish University (Hakan & Münire, 2014) , men showed a higher extrinsic motivation than women, but performance and mastery goals were not investigated. In one study with high-school students with the mean age of 16.6 years (study 1) and 14.36 years (study 2) girls demonstrated higher mastery goals in German and English whereas boys revealed higher mastery goals in math and physics. Regarding the performance goals, boys showed higher values in the approach dimension in math, physics, history and chemistry and higher performance avoidance goals in math and physics (Wirthwein & Steinmayr, 2020) . In another study, girls showed higher levels of mastery goals than boys in middle school. There were no significant differences between both genders concerning performance goals at the beginning of middle school, but performance goals stabilized in girls after Grade 7 whereas there was a decline in boys during this period (Theis & Fischer, 2017) . However, to our best knowledge no study has investigated possible gender differences in academic motivation beside the school context and our study adds to this missing research: Female university students demonstrate higher academic motivation measured with performance and mastery goals than male university students. Investigating the predictors of academic motivation in more detail, it was evident in the study presented here, that not gender, but the perceived stress is the relevant variable in explaining the academic motivation in that way that the perceived stress predicted the academic motivation positively. This means the higher the perceived stress the higher the academic motivation. Comparable results were found by Karaman and Watson (2017) who found positive correlations of achievement motivation and academic stress and by Ramaprabou and Dash (2018) showing that achievement motivation was highest in students with a moderate stress level compared to a slight or a high stress level. At the first glance this seemed astonishing, because a lot is known of the downside of stress as for example that students under stress performed worse (Gustems-Carnicer et al., 2019) . However, negative emotions or stress can also have enhancing effects. In one study, the authors demonstrated that anxiety motivation, that means the tendency to use anxiety as a source of motivation, mediated the relationship between trait anxiety and academic achievement. This means, people who were clear about their anxiety could use this to boost their motivation and performance (Strack et al., 2017) . The anxiety control theory predicts that anxiety is associated with directing more effort at the task (Eysenck et al., 2007) . The same could have happened with the perceived stress in the Coronavirus Pandemic: The uncertainty leads to focus on academic motivation for not losing touch with the academic claim. The Coronavirus might trigger the clearness of feelings: Because no one has experienced a Pandemic before, students are aware of their anxiety and their stress and used this to motivate themselves. Besides that, a moderate level of stress could help students becoming more responsible, setting their goals, and going after them while very little stress could lead to an easiness or even a carelessness which could be associated to less motivation and willpower to achieve a goal. Moreover, stress and motivation could be closely interlinked and mutually dependent. Students who are highly motivated and in fear of not getting good grades could be more stressed than unmotivated students who do not care about good grades. However, more studies must follow to confirm this assumption, for example while investigating anxiety motivation. In none of the measurements presented here, physical activity plays an important role. This contrasts with our hypotheses. However, in the study of Maher et al. (2021) a positive relation between the amount of physical activity and positive affect has been demonstrated. Whereas the measurement of positive affect seemed to be concentrated on short-term emotions, the concept of stress is outlasting. The results of the study presented here also contrasts the study of Silva et al. (2020) , where physical inactivity is associated with increased stress in Brazilian during the Coronavirus-Pandemic. One reasons for the different results might be the time of the investigations. In the third wave, participants might have figured out a lot of methods to stay more active and physical inactivity is not that relevant anymore to cope with the experienced stress. First, the period in which our participants were surveyed could have an influence on the results. Students might have gotten used to the situation after more than one year of restrictions. Second, our measurements of stress were correlated and general stress better explained students' motivation than the specific stress during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Students of higher education might be able to cope with the situation better than younger adolescents or less educated people. The academic context with digital learning possibilities might have been good enough so that the Pandemic has not affected students' academic motivation as much as more personal traits like their well-being or contentment. Third, other variables could have influenced students' motivation that we did not surveyed. Our results provide clear evidence that the perceived stress in the Coronavirus Pandemic improves academic motivation in German University students. This study adds to the literature that a specific amount of stress might be favorable for motivational factors. Furthermore, gender differences were found for students' motivation and perceived Coronavirus stress and perceived general stress. Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. 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All participants were informed of the goal and the anonymity of the study and the anonymity of the data storage. Furthermore, information was provided of the right to refuse to participate in the study or to withdraw consent to participate at any time without reprisal.Consent to participate All participants gave their informed consent prior to inclusion in the study in the online survey.