Correlation between Academic Self-Efficacy and Learning Anxiety in Medical Students Studying at Qom Branch of Islamic Azad University, 2017, (Iran)

  Lack of academic progress is considered as one of the major problems in the quality of higher education institutes, which leads to waste of time and cost and causes psychological problems in the students.The current study was conducted to determine the correlation between academic self-efficacy and learning anxiety in medical students studying at Qom Branch of Islamic Azad University.

This research was performed as a cross-sectional, descriptive, and analytical study on 131 students in Islamic Azad University of Qom city. Sampling was census method. The data were collected using two questionnaires of College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (CASES) and self-reporting Pekrun Learning Anxiety. Finally, data were analyzed using descriptive statistical tests, Pearson correlation, and t-test.

The mean age of the participants was 22.25±2.80, the mean academic self-efficacy score was 104.29±17.00, and the mean learning anxiety score was 33.14±6.69. There was no significant differrence between three demographic characteristics of gender, marital status, and place of residence with academi self-efficacy score (p>0.05), but, there was a significant relashionship between gender and marital status with learning anxiety score (p<0.05). There was no significant relationship between the mean score of learning anxiety and dormitory and non-dormitory residence (p=0.684). There was a significant direct correlation between academic grade point average and academic self-efficacy (r=0.261, p=0.003). There was a significant inverse correlation between academic self-efficacy and learning anxiety
(p=0.001, r=-0.388).

The findings of this research showed that there is a significant inverse correlation between the learning anxiety variable and academic self-efficacy in students; accordingly, reduction of the source of stress and stress-coping training should be paid attention to improve the students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs