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Child / Adolescent - Anxiety

The correlation between anxiety and academic self-concept in first generation college students

(PS9-D90) The Correlation Between Anxiety and Academic Self-concept in First Generation College Students

Saturday, November 19, 2022

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM EST

Location: Westside Ballroom, 5th Floor

Author(s)

AD

Ariana DeJesus Rodriguez, B.A.

Master's Student
Fordham University
New York, New York

Co-Author(s)

ER

Elizabeth B. B. Raposa, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology
Fordham University
Bronx, New York

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unique challenges to college students across the country especially those who identify as first-generation college students (FGCS; Craig, 2020; Soria et al., 2021). First-generation college students are students whose parents never completed a four-year degree (DeRosset et al., 2021). During the pandemic, FGCS were found to experience heightened levels of stress and anxiety as a result of the academic and personal changes of university shutdowns (Jeong et al., 2021). Previous research has also found that FGCS often have lower levels of academic self-concept than their peers (DeFritas & Rin, 2013), which has been found to directly impact their perceived and actual academic performance (Marsh, 2005; Marsh & Martin, 2011). While prior work has examined the role of test anxiety on academic self-concept, little to no studies examine the role of general anxiety on academic self-concept nor have they looked at these associations in the midst of a pandemic. To address these limitations, the current study examined the relationship between changes in anxiety and changes in academic self-concept in first-generation college students over the first few months of the pandemic (fall 2019 to spring 2020). 259 FGCS were recruited from three distinct institutions in the U.S. Participants were asked to rate their anxiety levels using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer et al., 1990 ) and changes in verbal academic self-concept (r = -.17, p < .01). These results suggest that an increase in anxiety levels was associated with decreases in students’ self-concept of their verbal abilities over the pandemic. This study begins to add to the literature suggesting that increases in mental health symptoms (i.e., anxiety) over the pandemic have negatively impacted FGCS academically. Future work should examine how other mental health symptoms (i.e., depression and stress ) have changed during the pandemic and the impact that these changes have on the academic life of FGCS.