The Association of Self-Efficacy With Self-Care Behaviors, Anxiety, and Academic Motivation in Iranian Medical Sciences Students Publisher



M Amiri MOHAMMAD ; E Sadeghi ELHAM ; A Parvane AYDA ; A Khosravi AHMAD
Source: Open Public Health Journal Published:2024

Abstract

Background and Objective: Medical students are most susceptible to contracting stressful clinical phenomena and experiencing subsequent psychological consequences. The study aimed to investigate the association between self-efficacy, self-care, and anxiety with academic motivation among students enrolled at Shahroud University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study, conducted in 2022 immediately after the university opening during the COVID-19 pandemic,to investigate anxiety and self-care behaviors related to COVID-19, academic self-efficacy, and motivation among 339 students from diverse medical science disciplines. A multi-stage random sampling technique was employed to choose the participants. The data underwent analysis using one-way ANOVA, Chi-square test, and linear regression model. The significance level for all tests was 0.05. Results: The mean score of students' self-care behavior was 56.5±13.7, the mean academic self-efficacy was 106.5±17.6, and the mean academic motivation score was 98.5±13.0. The mean score of students' anxiety about COVID-19 was 6.9±6.9, suggesting a low level of anxiety. A total of 70 participants (20.6%) demonstrated good self-care behaviors against COVID-19, 316 (93.2%) reported reduced anxiety related to COVID-19, and 154 (45.4%) reported high levels of academic motivation. Only the self-care behaviors and academic motivation variables in the faculty and COVID-19 setting were shown to be substantially correlated with the sense of academic self-efficacy in the final model. Conclusion: Medical students have been found to have significantly lower motivation and academic self-efficacy than students in other fields of study, so the need for identification of causes and implementation of intervention measures has been deemed necessary. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.