How Has the COVID-19 Crisis Affected the Academic Stress of University Students? The Role of Teachers and Students

Jesús de la Fuente; Mónica Pachón-Basallo; Flavia H Santos; Francisco J Peralta-Sánchez; María Carmen González-Torres; Raquel Artuch-Garde; Paola V Paoloni; Martha L Gaetha

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626340

How Has the COVID-19 Crisis Affected the Academic Stress of University Students? The Role of Teachers and Students

Front Psychol. 2021 Jun 1:12:626340. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626340. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jesús de la Fuente^{1

2}, Mónica Pachón-Basallo¹, Flavia H Santos³, Francisco J Peralta-Sánchez², María Carmen González-Torres¹, Raquel Artuch-Garde⁴, Paola V Paoloni⁵, Martha L Gaetha⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Education and Psychology, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.
² School of Psychology, University of Almería, Almería, Spain.
³ School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁴ School of Health Sciences, Public University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.
⁵ School of Education, Universidad de Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina.
⁶ School of Social Sciences, University of Puebla, Puebla, Mexico.

Abstract

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have required substantial adjustments in terms of university teaching-learning processes. The aim of this study was to verify whether there were significant differences between the academic year of 2020 and the two preceding years in factors and symptoms and stress. A total of 642 university students (ages 18-25 years) participated by filling out validated self-reports during the months from March to August 2020. Using an ex post facto design, SEM analyses and simple and multiple ANOVAs were performed. Structural results showed that stress factors from the teaching process had a predictive value for the learning process, emotions, and academic burnout, and being a man was a factor predicting negative emotion. In a similar way, inferential results revealed no significant effect of academic year but did show an effect of gender on stress experiences during the pandemic. Aside from certain specific aspects, there was no significant global effect of the year 2020 on factors and symptoms of stress. The results showed that studying in the year of the COVID-19 outbreak did not have a significant effect on stress triggered by the teaching process. From these results, we draw implications for specific guidance interventions with university teachers and students.

Keywords: COVID-19; academic stress; achievement emotions; engagement-burnout; gender; teaching–learning; undergraduates students.