Social support: mediating the emotional intelligence-academic stress link

Muhammad Shariat Ullah; Sharmeen Akhter; Muhammad Abdul Aziz; Muhaiminul Islam

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1218636

Social support: mediating the emotional intelligence-academic stress link

Front Psychol. 2023 Sep 5:14:1218636. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1218636. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Muhammad Shariat Ullah¹, Sharmeen Akhter¹, Muhammad Abdul Aziz¹, Muhaiminul Islam¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Organization Strategy and Leadership, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Abstract

Introduction: This study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and academic stress among tertiary-level students who continued academic activities remotely during the pandemic and the mediating role of social support (SS) in the relationship.

Methods: Using a cross-sectional survey design, 429 students studying business, engineering, social science, and science in Bangladesh provided data via Qualtrics. Using the Structural Equation Modeling in SmartPLS 4 (4.0.8.9), we modeled emotional intelligence as the reflective-formative and social support (support from family, friends, and significant other) and perceived academic stress as the reflective-reflective, second-order constructs. We also conducted a one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) to investigate the impact of gender (male and female) and current stage of academic study (Undergraduate year one to four and post-graduation) on emotional intelligence and academic stress, respectively.

Results and discussion: Results show that all the hypothesized relationships are statistically significant: EI is negatively related to perceived academic stress, and SS significantly mediates the relationship between EI and academic stress. Hence, essential strategies are suggested to help students for managing academic stress.

Keywords: PLS; academic stress; emotional intelligence; social support; structural equation modeling; tertiary level students.