How academic stress affects academic performance: A chain-mediated model of sex moderation

Abstract

Academic stress is a common psychological issue among college students, but the mechanism by which it affects academic performance is not well understood. This study extends existing literature by exploring a chain-mediated model composed of academic stress, learning motivation, depression, and academic performance. The study involved 591 students from a university in Hubei Province, China, and employed structural equation modelling to analyse the data. The results showed that academic stress did not have a significant direct effect on academic performance. Instead, depression played a significant mediating role between academic stress and academic performance. Further, learning motivation also acted as a mediator in the cascade between academic stress, depression, and academic performance. Subsequently, multi-group structural equation modelling was applied to analyse the data, revealing similarities and differences in the associations between variables based on sex. The results indicated that sex played a moderating role in the relationships among academic stress, depression, learning motivation, and academic performance. The implications of these findings were discussed.