The Vertical Relationship Between Adolescent Exam Stress And Psychological Well-being: The Mediating Role Of Self-esteem

Psychological well-being is to have a positive self-regard, to have positive relations with others, to be able to developing one’s potential through personal growth, to have purpose in life, being able to choose or create environments suitable to one’s psychic conditions, self-determining and independence.With the development of positive psychology, psychological well-being becomes one of the most important research subjects. Importantly, PWB contributes to a range of critical outcomes in adolescents’ life, including increased social support, greater life satisfaction, improved physical health and better academic performance. In the study of mental health of adolescents in China, most were discussed about psychological problems, less was about well-being, and the research on psychological well-being even less.Therefore, as the most critical period of learning and development, it is necessary to study adolescents’ psychological well being and its influencing factors.Examination stress is the physical and mental tension caused by the imbalancement between actual or perceived requirement and coping ablity when people in the process of adaptation to the specific examination environment, that can cause the external behavior, emotions, and physical changes. In China, the examination performance is a key criteria for evaluating a student and an important developmental indicator of successful school lives among adolescence. Therefore, as a adolescent in China, examination stress is the major source of stress in adolescents’ life. Previous studies have shown that stress can have negative effects on psychological well-being. Meanwhile, studies also found that stress can affect self-esteem, self-esteem can also affect psychological well-being.However, Despite a large number of studies focus on the relationship between examination stress and positive affect in adolescent or on the relationship between stress and psychological well-being, limited studies had paid their attentions on the patterns of relationships between changes on levels of examination stress and psychological well-being over time, barely any studies have examined the possible mediating mechanism of the effects of examination stress on psychological well-being.The current study employed a longitudinal study design, to explore the patterns of relationship between changes of levels of examination stress and psychological well-being over time and further explored the possible mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between examination stress and psychological well-being. Based on previous literature, the research objective of this study include the following aspects:(1) Examine the change trend of examination stress psychological well-being and self-esteem acorss the semester..(2) Explore the the relationship between level of examination stress and level of psychological well-being in adolescent students. And explore the relationship between change trend of examination stress and the change trend of psychological well-being in adolescent students.(3) Investigate the the mediation role of self-esteem in the relationship between examination stress and psychological well-being in adolescent students.This study uses a 24 items version of the Scales of Psychological Well-being, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, Examination stress Scale as the measurement tool. The research results show that:(1) Mean level of examination stress,psychological well-being and self-esteem decreased significantly acorss the semester.(2) Examination stress intercept were negatively predicted psychological well-being intercept and examination stress slope negatively predicted psychological well-being slope.(3) Self-esteem intercept partly mediated the effect of examination stress intercept on psychological well-being intercept.Conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) level of examination stress,psychological well-being and self-esteem decreased significantly from the beginning to the end of the semester.(2) Initial levels in examination stress were negatively predicted initial levels of psychological well-being and changes in examination stress across time negatively predicted significant changes in psychological well-being.(3) Initial levels in self-esteem partly mediated the effect of initial levels in examination stress on initial levels in psychological well-being...