Identification of Early Maladaptive Schemas and Determination of their Effects on Obvious and Hidden Anxiety of Probationary Students, Academic Failure and Academic Weakness

Psychological problems can lead to dropout or academic failure, and also identifying them would help prevent them. The purpose of this study was to identify early maladaptive schemas and to determine their role in students' obvious and hidden anxiety in three groups: probationary students, academic failure and academic weakness. This research was a descriptive-correlational study.Then the statistical population of this study included the probationary students, academic failure and academic weakness those were studying for undergraduate degree in Ahvaz Medical Sciences University in the academic year 1397-1978; moreover, the sample size consisted of 149 students of nursing, midwifery, public health, nutrition and speech therapy who were selected by cluster sampling from fifteen undergraduate fields. After subjects completed two questionnaires of Young Schema Questionnaire and Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, for statistical analysis, Pearson correlation coefficient, regression analysis and variance analysis were calculated using spss16 software. Consequently, in the conditional group, there was a significant relationship between apparent and hidden anxiety and schizophrenia with emotional deprivation schemes, abandonment, mistrust / maltreatment, social isolation / alienation, defect / shame, failure, dependency / inadequacy, vulnerability, and embarrassment. Moreover, academic problems triggered activation of early maladaptive schemas and aggravated students' anxiety; besides, early maladaptive schemas also accounted for 53/6% of the apparent and latent anxiety. Beta coefficients showed that failure schema had the most effect; in contrast, schema of mistrust / misconduct had the least effect on students' anxiety.