"Stress of university students before and after campus closure in response to COVID‐19"

Postdoctoral scholar Luise von Keyserlingk, lab manager Katsumi Yamaguchi-Perez, Professor and Dean Richard Arum, and Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Sue Eccles published an article in the Journal of Community Psychology analyzing COVID-19’s impact on students’ study-related stress.
 
The title of the article is “Stress of university students before and after campus closure in response to COVID‐19.”
 
von Keyserlingk studies the underlying mechanisms of young adults’ educational choices and motivation. She aims to understand the role of different individual characteristics, as well as of contextual characteristics in such decisions. In recent research, she focused on the role of domain specific ability beliefs and interests in secondary school on university major choice in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). von Keyserlingk received her Diploma (equivalent to M.S.) in Psychology at the Technical University Dresden in Germany prior to studying abroad at the University of La Serena in Chile. Subsequently, she moved to Berlin and worked with longitudinal large-scale data at the Leibniz-Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF) investigating students’ motivation and self-concepts at the transition from secondary school to higher education while pursuing her Ph.D.

Luise von Keyserlingk

​Abstract
 
Due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, universities were forced to adopt a remote learning model, which introduced a number of stressors into college students' everyday life and study habits. The current study investigates if students' study‐related stress increased after the pandemic's onset and how individual and contextual factors moderate this potential stress increase. Longitudinal survey data about students' stress levels and self‐efficacy in self‐regulation were collected before and after the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic at a public university (N = 274). Regression analysis results show an overall increase in study‐related stress levels after the onset of the pandemic. Students with self‐efficacy in self‐regulation reported lower stress increases; students with higher mental health impairment and limited time for coursework reported larger stress increases. To address students' stress levels and strengthen coping resources, universities should consider providing students with resources to improve their self‐regulation and time‐management skills.