Mediating Effect of Positive Psychological Strength and Study Skills on Examination Anxiety among Nigerian College Students

Impact of social support on college students' anxiety due to COVID-19 isolation: Mediating roles of perceived risk and resilience in the postpandemic period

Introduction

Because of the outbreak of COVID-19, several colleges and universities in Xi'an, China, implemented quarantine measures and closed their gates, which increased anxiety among the students.

Methods

The Perceived Social Support Scale, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 Pandemic Scale, Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale were used for measurements. SPSS26 and AMOS26 (IBM SPSS AMOS Statistics, New York, United States) were used for data analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the data from the 2,251 respondents and the hypothetical model.

Results

The students' perceived social support was discovered to have had a significant negative effect on anxiety. The students' perceived COVID-19 risk and resilience played significant mediating roles in the relationship between social support and anxiety.

Discussion

When college students feel social support and have resilience, they can reduce anxiety during the epidemic stage. Therefore, education administrators and parents should help college students to identify the current situation of the epidemic environment, enrich relevant knowledge.

Context matters: Sociocultural considerations in the design and implementation of community-based positive psychology interventions in sub-Saharan Africa

Scholars conducting cross-cultural research in mental health often import intervention programs found to be efficacious in one social context (e.g., Western) and directly implement them in other contexts (e.g., African and Asian) without recourse to the sociocultural disparities between the target populations and the theoretical foundations of the constructs and principles underpinning the intervention programs. Such efforts mistakenly assume that positive psychology interventions (PPIs), most of which were developed from Western perspectives and assumed individualistic cultural orientation and value systems, operate equally across all contexts. Drawing on the extant literature and on insights from designing, implementing, and evaluating group-based (mental) health behavior change intervention programs across several communities in Ghana, we discuss some sociocultural, theoretical, and methodological issues that can significantly constrain the design, uptake, and effectiveness of PPIs in the rural, low literate, socioeconomically disadvantaged, highly collectivistic context of Ghana, and sub-Saharan Africa more generally. In all illustrations, we offer suggestions to guide the design and implementation processes to ensure culturally appropriate, highly acceptable, and potentially effective intervention programs. We argue that PPIs can be potentially fructuous in the sub-region when adapted to, or embedded in, the cultural values of the target population and tailored to the needs, capacities, and circumstances of participants.