AUTHOR=Cassaretto Mónica , Espinosa Agustín , Chau Cecilia 

TITLE=Effects of resilience, social support, and academic self-efficacy, on mental health among Peruvian university students during the pandemic: the mediating role of digital inclusion

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1282281

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1282281

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Background: Mental health of university students has been impacted during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of understanding its psychosocial determinants. Nevertheless, there has been limited exploration into whether the digital inclusion conditions for remote education could mediate the effects that variables such as resilience, social support, and academic self-efficacy may have on mental health. 
Objectives: This study seeks to analyze the effect of resilience, social support and academic self-efficacy, on the mental health of a group of Peruvian university students; in addition, it seeks to analyze the mediating role of digital inclusion. 
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 3147 undergraduate students from a private university in Lima, Perú. From August to October 2020, data were collected online through questionnaire, this include The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21, Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), The CD-RISC10 (Connor & Davidson, 2003), The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (EMASP, Zimet et al., 1988), The Perceived Self-Efficacy Specific for Academic Situations Scale (EAPESA, Domínguez-Lara, 2014)  and to measure digital inclusion, the Perceived Quality of Internet Access reported by the students. The levels of participants’ anxiety, depression and stress were described using frequency and percentage. Pearson Correlation test was used to measure the correlation between the variables and a Path analysis was conducted. Finally, The PROCESS macro for SPSS (Model 4) was applied to examine the mediating effect of the model controlling gender variable.
Results: The results revealed significant levels of extremely severe symptoms of anxiety (36.8%), depression (33.4%) and stress (18.1%) among the participants. A path analysis, which indicated that resilience (β =-.346), social support (β=-.189), academic self-efficacy (β =-.060) and digital inclusion (β =-.089) had significant impact on students' General Distress. In addition, digital inclusion plays a partial mediation role with low but significant effect size in the relationship between resilience, social support and self-efficacy with mental health. 
Conclusion: Mental health of university students during the pandemic shows alarming levels of general or emotional distress. The findings indicate that resilience, social support and self-efficacy protect college students' mental health by reducing general distress.