Trust in academic management during the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal effects on mental health and academic self-efficacy

Abstract

In higher education, students’ trust in the university management may affect both mental health and academic self-efficacy. This longitudinal study, conducted during the most challenging course of the COVID-19 pandemic, uses multinomial regression and causal inference to estimate the effects of students’ trust in their universities’ strategies for managing the pandemic, on students’ self-reported changes in mental health and academic self-efficacy. The analyzed sample (N = 2796) was recruited through online advertising and responded to a baseline online survey in the late spring of 2020, with two follow-up surveys five and ten months later. Results show that positive trust in university management of the pandemic protected against experiencing one’s mental health and academic self-efficacy as worse rather than unchanged, both five and ten months after the baseline assessment. The findings emphasize the importance of developing and maintaining trust-building measures between academia and students to support students’ mental health and academic self-efficacy in times of uncertainty.

Keywords:

• University/college
• Covid-19
• trust
• management
• mental health
• academic self-efficacy

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Ah Choo Koo
• Faculty of Creative Multimedia
• Multimedia University
• Malaysia

SUBJECTS:

• Psychological Science
• Mental Health
• Work & Organizational Psychology
• Sustainability Education, Training & Leadership
• Educational Psychology
• Education - Social Sciences
• Health & Society

Acknowledgements

We extend our appreciation to the participants in our study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

Ethical approval for this study was granted on May 11, 2020, by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Ref. No. 2020-02109). All participants provided informed consent by ticking a box before entering the questionnaire.

Data availability statement

The dataset analyzed in the current study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), grant no 2019-01127 to author AHB as principal investigator. The funder had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Claes Andersson

Claes Andersson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and senior lecturer of Criminology at Malmö University. He has experience doing research on mental health in university students, both nationally and internationally, and has experience in using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Anne H. Berman

Anne H. Berman, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Uppsala University’s Department of Psychology. She has over 25 years of experience conducting RCTs, focusing on low threshold, easy access interventions, from ear acupuncture to minimal as well as low- and high-intensive digital interventions for substance use and mental health.

Petra Lindfors

Petra Lindfors, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University. Her research focuses on well-being and health, specifically in educational settings, youth, and early adulthood. She has been involved in both implementation and intervention research.

Marcus Bendtsen

Marcus Bendtsen, PhD, is a Senior Associate Professor in biostatistics and public health at Linköping University. He has extensive experience in designing, executing, analyzing, and leading RCTs on behavior interventions. Bendtsen is an expert in Bayesian statistics and leads a research lab focusing on health behaviors, health economy, and biostatistics.