The mediation effects of achievement motivation and locus of control between academic stress and life satisfaction in undergraduate students

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the mediation effect of locus of control and achievement motivation between academic stress and life satisfaction. A total of 307 undergraduate students recruited from a Hispanic Serving Institution in South Texas participated in the study. In the frame of the study, two mediation models were tested by utilising PROCESS Procedure for SPSS (Hayes, 2013. Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press). The results indicated that bivariate correlations among study variables ranged from −.24 to .32. The overall composite indicated that academic stress contributed to 6% of the variance in life satisfaction (p < .01) among students (b = −.06), while the mediating effect of locus of control contributed to 10% of the variance in Life Satisfaction (p < .01) among students (b = −.4).

KEYWORDS:

• Life satisfaction
• academic stress
• achievement motivation
• locus of control
• undergraduate students

Acknowledgement

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Mehmet Akif Karaman is an assistant professor at the Department of Counseling and Guidance at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He has practiced in psychiatric hospitals, community mental health agencies, school districts, and non-profit organisations. His research interests include achievement motivation, instrument development, cross-cultural studies, and counselling children and adolescents.

Dr Kristina M. Nelson is an assistant professor of Counselor Education at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She has worked with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families in university, community-based, and private practice counselling settings. Dr Nelson’s research interests include trauma, child abuse prevention, positive psychology, and family-related issues.

Dr Javier Cavazos Vela is an assistant professor at the Department of Counseling and Guidance at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His research focuses on understanding how positive psychology, humanistic, cultural, and family factors influence Mexican American adolescents’ and young adults’ mental health, career development, and academic achievement.