Mediating role of self-regulated learning strategies in the relationship of mindfulness and responsibility with interpersonal relationships and social acceptance in undergraduate medical students

Every society tries to improve its educational systems to educate students to face their problems in daily life easily. Therefore, it is essential to provide optimal learning conditions and situations in the learning process to achieve the best results. The study aimed to investigate the mediating role of self-regulation learning strategies in the relationship of mindfulness and responsibility with interpersonal relationships and social acceptance in general practitioner students.

This cross-sectional study was conducted from January to August 2022. Based on structural equation modeling methodology, 384 medical students of Zanjan University of Medical Science participated in this study by simple random sampling. The questionnaires used included Baer's Mindfulness, Responsibility, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Crown's Social Acceptance, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies questionnaire. The questionnaire was made electronically using the native Porsline system. Standard equation modeling was used by SPSS (version 24) and Lisrel (version 8.8) software packages to analyze the data with a 95% confidence interval.

The findings demonstrated that mindfulness directly affects interpersonal relationships (P=0.03, β=0.31). The direct effect of mindfulness on social acceptance revealed a positive and statistically significant effect of P=0.04, β =0.28. With a standard beta of 0.33, the results indicated a direct and significant impact of accountability on interpersonal relationships (P=0.03). The results also suggested that the direct effect of responsibility on social acceptance was positive and statistically significant (P=0.01, β=0.45).

According to the findings of the model analysis, responsibility and mindfulness directly affected interpersonal relationships and social acceptance while simultaneously fostering solidarity. Furthermore, the indirect path of responsibility on social acceptance was significant; that is, self-regulation was able to serve as a mediator between responsibility, and social acceptance, and the final model could explain, on average, 50% of the distribution of "interpersonal relations and acceptance" in the student population. Therefore, it is suggested to pay attention to such factors as self-regulation and interpersonal skills in the education of students.