In plain language
University life is stressful: exams, deadlines, competition and heavy workloads all pile up, and stress is known to drag down students’ grades. But does it drag everyone down equally? This study asked whether “learned resourcefulness” — a learnable set of self-control skills for managing negative emotions and staying on task under pressure — protects students from the academic damage that stress can cause.
The researchers had 141 first-year undergraduate students complete measures of academic stress and learned resourcefulness, and then obtained the students’ actual grade point averages from university records rather than relying on self-report.
Overall, higher academic stress went with lower grades. But resourcefulness changed the picture dramatically: high stress harmed the grades of students low in learned resourcefulness, while it had no measurable effect on the grades of highly resourceful students. Because learned resourcefulness is a set of skills that can be taught, the findings point to a practical way of helping stress-vulnerable students — training them in the self-management skills that seem to buffer stress’s impact on performance.
Key findings
- Academic stress was negatively related to academic performance: more stressed students tended to have lower grade point averages.
- Learned resourcefulness significantly moderated the stress–performance relationship (interaction significant at p < .05).
- High academic stress adversely affected the grades of students low in learned resourcefulness.
- High academic stress had no significant effect on the grades of students high in learned resourcefulness — resourcefulness acted as a protective buffer.
- Female students obtained higher grade point averages than male students in this sample.
- Performance was measured objectively, using GPAs obtained from university records rather than students’ self-reports.
How to cite
APA
Akgun, S., & Ciarrochi, J. (2003). Learned resourcefulness moderates the relationship between academic stress and academic performance. Educational Psychology, 23(3), 287–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144341032000060129
BibTeX
@article{akgun2003learned,
author = {Akgun, Serap and Ciarrochi, Joseph},
title = {Learned resourcefulness moderates the relationship between academic stress and academic performance},
journal = {Educational Psychology},
year = {2003},
volume = {23},
number = {3},
pages = {287--294},
doi = {10.1080/0144341032000060129}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
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Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.