Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-23-2022

Journal / Book Title

Youth

Abstract

In a large, ethnically diverse sample of college-attending emerging adults (N = 693; ages 18–29), the current study examines associations between self-efficacy and individual adjustment (academic satisfaction, depressive symptoms, subjective physical health, and loneliness), directly and indirectly through perceived stress. Moderated mediation effects by sex, ethnicity, school year, and first-generation status were also explored. Using PROCESS, results show that self-efficacy was directly related to adjustment, and indirectly related through lower stress. Sex moderated the associations between self-efficacy and stress as well as stress and depressive symptoms; the relations were stronger in women. School year moderated how stress was associated with academic satisfaction in that the negative association was not found among the fourth-year students, but in all other peers. First-generation status moderated the negative association of self-efficacy and stress, with it being greater for first-generation college students compared to their peers. In addition, self-efficacy was positively related to academic satisfaction for first-generation students, but no relation was found for other students.

DOI

10.3390/youth2040047

Rights

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Published Citation

Madson, R. C., Perrone, P. B., Goldstein, S. E., & Lee, C.-Y. S. (2022). Self-Efficacy, Perceived Stress, and Individual Adjustment among College-Attending Emerging Adults. Youth, 2(4), 668-680. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth2040047

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