Promoting academic self-efficacy, positive relationships, and psychological resilience for Chinese university students’ life satisfaction

Abstract

The current study, based on the PERMA model, proposed and examined a hypothetical model exploring the effects of academic self-efficacy, positive relationships, and psychological resilience on university students’ life satisfaction. We collected data from a large sample of 1,089 university students in southwest China. The participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaire items measuring academic self-efficacy, positive relationships, psychological resilience, and life satisfaction. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated a good fit for our data, suggesting that academic self-efficacy positively predicted university students’ life satisfaction through two independent mediators: positive relationships and psychological resilience. Findings yielded from the empirically validated hypothetical model add value to and enrich the PERMA model within a group of Chinese university students. The implications and practical suggestions for improving university students’ life satisfaction are discussed in light of these findings.

Keywords:

• Life satisfaction
• academic self-efficacy
• positive relationships
• psychological resilience
• Chinese university students

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC: 71801180 and 72271205), Mental Health Education Research Center of Sichuan Province (Grant No., XLJKJY2239B), Applied Psychology Research Center of Sichuan Province (Grant No., CSXL-22101), and the 2022 Graduate Students’ Educational Research Program of Southwest Jiaotong University (YJG5-2022-Z019-2022) to the first author. This work was also funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No., 20BZZ079), the 2021 Undergraduate Teaching Reform Project of Southwest Jiaotong University (2103102), and the Postgraduate Teaching Reform Project of Southwest Jiaotong University (YJG4-2020-TZ07-2) to the corresponding author.