The mediating role of resilience between emotional intelligence and academic procrastination in nursing undergraduates: A cross-sectional study
Abstract
Aim
To investigate the relationship among emotional intelligence (EI), resilience and academic procrastination (AP), and provide suggestions for the development of targeted intervention strategies and lowering of AP level of nursing undergraduates.
Design
A cross-sectional study.
Methods
Three provincial universities offering nursing courses in China were investigated in this study. A convenience sample of 256 nursing undergraduates from May 2021 to September 2021 were recruited, with a response rate of 91.4%. Data were collected using face-to-face interviews. The survey tools included the General Information Questionnaire, Academic Procrastination Scale, Emotional Intelligence Scale and Resilience Scale. IBM SPSS v19.0 and Amos 22.0 were used for data analysis.
Results
The AP of sampled nursing undergraduates was at the middle level (54.4 ± 21.5). The AP of nursing undergraduates was negatively correlated with EI and resilience. Moreover, the analysis on the mediating role of resilience via structural equation model showed a good fit, with χ2/df = 2.34, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.99, GFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.98.
Patient or Public Contribution
No patient or public contribution.
1 INTRODUCTION
Procrastination is a behavioural activity in which individuals indefinitely postpone tasks with unnecessary excuses (Steel, 2007). Academic procrastination (AP) refers to deliberate delay in completing academic tasks even though one is aware of its negative outcomes and consequences (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). AP is common in college students (Ren et al., 2021; Tao et al., 2021). Approximately 13.8%–49.9% students majoring in healthcare procrastinates on academic assignments until the deadline (Madhan et al., 2012; Mortazavi et al., 2015). AP could lead to poor academic performance and has a negative impact on undergraduates' academic satisfaction (Kim & Seo, 2015). In addition, those who always deliberately procrastinate their study missions were more likely to have psychological problems and higher suicidal tendency (Flett et al., 2016; Steel, 2007). Therefore, lowering AP level is critical to improving educational outcomes such as academic achievement, emotional regulation and psychological resilience (Miraj et al., 2021; Mohammadi et al., 2020; Schuenemann et al., 2022).
Procrastination is not simple study-weariness or a time management problem. It is a complex process involving cognition, emotion and behaviour (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). As the connection between cognition and behaviour, emotion is undoubtedly an important factor affecting AP. In another word, procrastination is influenced by an individual's ability to regulate their own emotions, emotional intelligence (EI) (Mayer et al., 2008). EI is sometimes known as emotional–social intelligence, referring to a positive psychological disposition described as the interconnected emotional and social competency, the ability to effectively understand one's own and others' emotions, as well as the ability to regulate emotions and effectively use them in various situations (Bar-On, 2006; Wong & Law, 2002). Negative emotion is an important precursor of procrastination while emotion regulation has positive effect on the understanding of ‘procrastination is a failure of self-regulation’, which means individuals give up long-term goals, voluntarily postpone or avoid unpleasant tasks and yield to temporary good feelings for temporary emotional repair (Steel, 2007; Tice et al., 2001; Wypych et al., 2018). The temporal decision-making model of procrastination assumes that task-negative processes (task aversion) increase an individual's propensity to procrastination, and such a decision always occurs in tasks perceived as aversive that would trigger unpleasant feelings or negative emotions (Zhang et al., 2019). Recent studies have reported the relationship between EI and AP, but there are few studies focusing on them in nursing undergraduates including male nursing students (Chew et al., 2013; MacCann et al., 2020; Martinez-Martinez et al., 2020; Sanchez-Gomez & Breso, 2020). The study results indicated the underlying mechanism of the relationship between EI and AP: specifically, high EI may reduce AP by increasing self-efficacy. Students major in nursing for various reasons, but very few of them are truly interested in it (Peng et al., 2016). Many of these students choose escape to relieve their anxiety and pressure when encountering difficulties in learning, which causes procrastination behaviour (Mcdermott et al., 2020). Good emotional regulation is a protective factor against AP (Augusto et al., 2008; Mohammadi et al., 2020). It is therefore essential to further explore the relationship between AP and EI and the underlying mechanism, and develop intervention strategies accordingly.
Resilience refers to the psychosocial characteristics of individuals that enable them to overcome, adapt to and grow up in front of challenges and adversities (Connor, 2006). The potential mechanism of how EI impacts AP may be that higher levels of EI may lead to greater resilience, which results in lower levels of AP. Positive emotions have positive effect on resilience whereas negative emotions have the opposite effect (Mao et al., 2021). Moreover, EI could positively influence nursing students' caring ability and AP (Shafait et al., 2021; ShinEunSun & Lee, 2016; Wang et al., 2020). Depression and anxiety can interfere with information processing, thus is essential for AP. Students with higher EI can obtain information and regulate emotions better, which helps them maintain positive and optimistic attitudes (Lee & Kim, 2021). If students are optimistic about the tasks to be completed and highly motivated, they would have less procrastination (Wan & Nie, 2020). In addition, a previous study indicated that EI affected interpersonal relationships and shaped resilience level to some extent (Sarrionandia et al., 2018). Based on forementioned studies, it was hypothesized in this paper that resilience may mediate the relationship between AP and EI.
In sum, we aimed to examine the relationship among EI, resilience and AP, as well as its underlying mechanism using a mediation effect model established by Edwards et al (Edwards & Lambert, 2007; Muller et al., 2005). Our main objectives were as follows: (1) to explore whether EI is negatively associated with AP in nursing students; (2) to investigate whether resilience mediates the effect of EI on AP; (3) to provide suggestions for the development of intervention strategies. The overall mediated effect model is given in Figure 1.
2 METHODS
2.1 Study design
A cross-sectional study was designed. A convenience sample (N = 256) of nursing undergraduates was recruited from three provincial universities in China. Data were collected from May 2021 to September 2021. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) 4-year full-time nursing undergraduates, (b) voluntarily participate with informed consent provided and (c) no mental illness. The exclusion criteria were as follows: (a) nursing students who dropped out of school, (b) international students and exchange students and (c) nursing students who could not complete the questionnaire. Consent and support of relevant people in charge have been acquired before the investigation. During the survey, participants were informed about the purpose and significance of this study and completed questionnaires by themselves. Questionnaires were collected on the spot.
2.2 Measurements
Participants' EI, resilience and AP were calculated based on validated scales (EI, resilience and AP scales) detailed below. Questionnaires also collected participant's demographic information, including gender, academic year, residence, academic record, family education type, relationship with parents and professional recognition, etc.
2.2.1 Emotional Intelligence Scale
Emotional intelligence was assessed using the Chinese version of Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) developed by Wang and He (2002). This scale consists of 33 items rated by5-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), covering the following four dimensions: emotional perception, self-regulation on emotion, regulation on other's emotion and use of emotions. A higher score suggests a higher EI. In Concepción, the internal reliability of EI (Cronbach's α = 0.92) and Cronbach alpha values of each dimension were greater than 85% (Espinoza-Venegas et al., 2015). In our study, Cronbach's α was 0.91.
2.2.2 Resilience Scale
Resilience was measured using the Chinese version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) originally developed by Yu and Zhang (2007). This scale has 25 questions in three dimensions rated by 5-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = never to 5 = always). Higher score indicates higher level of resilience. The scale consists of subscales assessing tenacity, self-improvement and optimism. The Cronbach's α coefficient for Korea sample was 0.92 and the test–retest coefficient was 0.88 (Jung et al., 2012). In this study, Cronbach's α was 0.91 as a whole, and was 0.76 and 0.86, respectively, for three dimensions.
2.2.3 Academic Procrastination Scale
Academic procrastination was measured using the Chinese version of the Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students (PASS) developed by Solomon and Rothblum (1984). The scale includes a total of 6 tasks, 18 items in three dimensions: procrastination frequency (from 1 = never to 5 = always), procrastination cognition (from 1 = not a problem at all to 5 = always a problem) and desire to correct procrastination (from 1 = do not want to to 5 = extremely want to). The first and second dimensions were added to the score. A higher score indicates a higher AP degree. The third dimension was added to the desired score. A higher score indicates a greater desire to correct procrastination. The total score of the scale was used as the final score assessing nursing undergraduate's AP level. An adequate reliability value (Cronbach's α = 0.91) has been reported in southeast China (Ren et al., 2021). In our study, Cronbach's α was 0.93, and the Cronbach's α of three dimension was between 0.90 and 0.93.
2.3 Statistical methods
IBM SPSS v19.0 was adopted to demographic characteristics analysis. Pearson's correlations were calculated to test initial correlations of variables. We conducted structural equation modelling using Amos 22.0 to examine the mediating effect of resilience. Resilience and EI were used as independent variables while AP as dependent variable. The Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker Lewis Index (TLI), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and the Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI) were computed to evaluate model's fitting degree. RMSEA <0.08, CFI ≥0.90, TLI ≥0.90 and GFI ≥0.90 indicated a relatively good fit. In addition, indirect effects were tested using the bootstrapping approach with a confidence interval of 95% (bootstrap replications: 5000) (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Notably, the significance level for all tests was set at p < 0.05.
3 RESULTS
3.1 Demographic information and AP
Participants' characteristics and scores of three variables are listed in Table 1. Among 256 nursing undergraduates, 186 (72.7%) were females, 169 (66.0%) of Han nationality, 137 (53.5%) from rural areas, 140 (54.7%) from democratic family education and 111 (43.4%) had close relationships with their parents. Moreover, 79 (30.9%) had a good relationship with their parents. Differences in AP scores in academic year, family education type, relationship with parents, difficulty of learning tasks and professional recognition were statistically significant (p < 0.05). The mean AP score was 54.4 (21.5) (range 12–60).
| Characteristics | Group | Academic procrastination (mean ± SD) | t/F value | p value | Resilience (mean ± SD) | t/F value | p value | Emotional intelligence (mean ± SD) | t/F value | p value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gender | Male | 52.61 ± 21.04 | −0.80 | 0.42 | 78.60 ± 17.02 | −0.16 | 0.88 | 102.99 ± 27.60 | 1.00 | 0.32 |
| Female | 55.04 ± 21.76 | 78.98 ± 17.48 | 98.56 ± 32.80 | |||||||
| Domicile | Rural area | 52.26 ± 22.28 | −1.69 | 0.09 | 79.78 ± 18.12 | 0.89 | 0.37 | 103.90 ± 33.11 | 2.27 | 0.02 |
| Urban area | 56.82 ± 20.50 | 77.84 ± 16.37 | 95.02 ± 28.88 | |||||||
| Nation | Han nationality | 55.25 ± 21.53 | 0.90 | 0.37 | 78.76 ± 16.70 | −0.16 | 0.88 | 97.33 ± 31.70 | −1.74 | 0.08 |
| Ethnic minority | 52.69 ± 21.61 | 79.11 ± 18.58 | 104.52 ± 30.63 | |||||||
| Relationship with parents | Intimacy | 44.02 ± 20.16 | 26.99 | <0.001 | 83.30 ± 16.90 | 6.29 | <0.001 | 110.78 ± 30.30 | 15.32 | <0.001 |
| Good | 57.63 ± 18.78 | 77.28 ± 16.24 | 100.19 ± 30.29 | |||||||
| Common | 62.80 ± 18.12 | 75.87 ± 15.94 | 83.98 ± 25.25 | |||||||
| Estrangement | 79.65 ± 11.72 | 67.60 ± 27.23 | 73.30 ± 25.48 | |||||||
| Types of family education | Laissez-faire | 52.65 ± 17.28 | 30.26 | <0.001 | 80.63 ± 14.02 | 33.21 | <0.001 | 97.92 ± 26.56 | 12.06 | <0.001 |
| Democratic type | 48.23 ± 20.52 | 83.90 ± 16.00 | 106.93 ± 30.70 | |||||||
| Autocratic | 72.31 ± 18.84 | 63.85 ± 15.69 | 83.33 ± 31.47 | |||||||
| Learning task difficulty | Easy | 44.63 ± 21.58 | 18.16 | <0.001 | 83.71 ± 17.03 | 7.47 | <0.001 | 111.93 ± 33.01 | 13.39 | <0.001 |
| Common | 56.21 ± 19.14 | 78.49 ± 16.10 | 97.88 ± 28.13 | |||||||
| Difficult | 65.05 ± 20.31 | 72.54 ± 18.26 | 85.67 ± 29.20 | |||||||
| Student cadres | Yes | 55.79 ± 21.49 | 0.75 | 0.45 | 80.13 ± 16.94 | 0.83 | 0.41 | 97.29 ± 30.13 | −0.91 | 0.37 |
| No | 53.65 ± 21.60 | 78.24 ± 17.54 | 101.05 ± 32.15 | |||||||
| Academic year | Freshman | 33.63 ± 17.96 | 39.54 | <0.001 | 93.61 ± 13.84 | 27.52 | <0.001 | 127.44 ± 26.59 | 34.17 | <0.001 |
| Sophomore | 56.32 ± 19.65 | 76.28 ± 15.91 | 101.11 ± 28.24 | |||||||
| Junior | 61.29 ± 17.22 | 75.52 ± 15.14 | 84.26 ± 22.10 | |||||||
| Senior | 65.30 ± 16.53 | 70.88 ± 15.47 | 87.22 ± 29.02 | |||||||
| Academic record | Outstanding | 55.01 ± 26.78 |
0.26 |
0.77 | 78.67 ± 21.91 | 0.31 | 0.73 | 106.15 ± 37.70 | 2.88 | 0.06 |
| Medium | 54.60 ± 19.52 | 78.48 ± 15.16 | 97.87 ± 28.01 | |||||||
| Bad | 51.94 ± 14.98 | 81.06 ± 13.22 | 92.44 ± 26.63 | |||||||
| Professional recognition | Approval | 43.26 ± 22.27 | 33.01 | <0.001 | 83.99 ± 17.03 | 11.37 | <0.001 | 116.01 ± 29.36 | 33.81 | <0.001 |
| Indifferent | 57.20 ± 17.37 | 78.95 ± 15.92 | 96.12 ± 29.64 | |||||||
| Disapproval | 66.35 ± 16.50 | 72.06 ± 16.86 | 81.83 ± 24.54 |
3.2 Correlations among AP, EI and resilience
The correlation coefficients for EI, resilience and AP are presented in Table 2. It can be seen that these three variables were correlated with one another: the total score for AP was negatively correlated with the scores for EI (r = −0.68, p < 0.01) and had strong negative correlation with resilience (r = −0.69, p < 0.01) while EI had moderate positive correlations with resilience (r = 0.57, p < 0.01).
| Variables | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AP | 1 | |||||||||
| 2. AP1 | 0.94** | 1 | ||||||||
| 3. AP2 | 0.90** | 0.90** | 1 | |||||||
| 4. AP3 | 0.90** | 0.89** | 0.88** | 1 | ||||||
| 5. EI | −0.68** | −0.68** | −0.63** | −0.67** | 1 | |||||
| 6. EP | −0.66** | −0.65** | −0.60** | −0.65** | 0.93** | 1 | ||||
| 7. SER | −0.67** | −0.67** | −0.61** | −0.65** | 0.92** | 0.87** | 1 | |||
| 8. OER | −0.58** | −0.59** | −0.52** | −0.56** | 0.92** | 0.88** | 0.82** | 1 | ||
| 9. UE | −0.64** | −0.62** | −0.61** | −0.63** | 0.93** | 0.88** | 0.81** | 0.85** | 1 | |
| 10. RE | −0.69** | −0.69** | −0.65** | −0.65** | 0.57** | 0.56** | 0.48** | 0.52** | 0.57** | 1 |
- Abbreviations: AP, academic procrastination; AP1, procrastination frequency; AP2, procrastination obsession; AP3, desire to reduce procrastination; EI, emotional intelligence; EP, emotional perception; OER, others emotion regulation; RE, resilience; SER, self-emotion regulation; UE, use of emotions.
- ** p < 0.01.
3.3 Multiple linear regression of the influencing factors of AP score
As shown in Table 3, the multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that types of family education and professional recognition were significantly positively related to AP (B = 3.63, p < 0.001; B = 1.98, p < 0.01), whereas learning task difficulty was negatively related to AP (B = 2.48, p < 0.05). After controlling the covariates, both EI and resilience were negatively associated with AP (B = −0.23, p < 0.001; B = −0.15, p < 0.001). All variables explained 68.8% of the variation in AP. Based on the mediating effect analysis method and theoretical hypothesis (Wen et al., 2014), it was speculated that resilience had a mediating effect between EI and AP.
| Variable | Model 1 | Std. error | Model 2 | Std. error | Model 3 | Std. error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Step 1) B | (Step 2) B | (Step 3) B | ||||
| Academic year | 2.084* | 0.574 | 1.359* | 0.531 | 1.351 | 0.523 |
| Relationship with parents | 1.291* | 0.869 | 0.832* | 0.793 | 0.431 | 0.794 |
| Types of family education | 4.753*** | 1.322 | 3.950** | 1.207 | 3.632*** | 1.194 |
| Learning task difficulty | 3.861*** | 1.003 | 2.684* | 0.926 | 2.484* | 0.915 |
| Professional recognition | 2.589*** | 0.834 | 1.989*** | 0.763 | 1.984** | 0.752 |
| Emotional intelligence | −0.283*** | 0.039 | −0.227*** | 0.043 | ||
| Resilience | −0.153*** | 0.053 | ||||
| F | 51.835*** | 63.761*** | 78.146*** | |||
| R2 (Adjustment R2) | 0.509 | 0.606 | 0.688 | |||
| ΔR2 | 0.509 | 0.097 | 0.082 |
- * p < 0.05;
- ** p < 0.01;
- *** p < 0.001.
3.4 Mediating effect of resilience between EI and AP
The final mediation model of resilience between EI and AP is presented in Figure 2. The model displayed a satisfactory fitting degree, with χ2/df = 2.34, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.99, GFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.98. This model explained 39.99% of the variance in AP and indirect effect of EI on AP caused by resilience accounted for 83% of total effect (Table 4).
| Path coefficient | SE value | CR value | Standardized path coefficient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resilience ← Emotional intelligence | 0.08 | 9.46*** | 0.73 |
| Academic procrastination ← Resilience | 0.06 | −8.06*** | −0.45 |
| Academic procrastination ← Emotional Intelligence | 0.07 | −7.71*** | −0.50 |
| Tenacity ← Resilience | 1.00 | ||
| Self-improvement ← Resilience | 0.04 | 18.05*** | 0.78 |
| Optimistic ← Resilience | 0.03 | 16.44*** | 0.41 |
| Desire to reduce procrastination ← Academic procrastination | 1.00 | ||
| Procrastination obsession ← Academic procrastination | 0.03 | 28.94*** | 0.94 |
| Procrastination frequency ← Academic procrastination | 0.03 | 34.97*** | 1.01 |
| Emotional use ← Emotional Intelligence | 1.00 | ||
| Self-emotion regulation ← Emotional Intelligence | 0.06 | 23.91*** | 1.36 |
| Others emotion regulation ← Emotional Intelligence | 0.04 | 24.88*** | 0.96 |
| Emotional perception ← Emotional Intelligence | 0.06 | 29.32*** | 1.79 |
- *** p < 0.001.
As shown in Table 5, the total effect of EI on AP was −0.70 (95% CI:−0.80, −0.60), in which the indirect effect caused by resilience was −0.28 (95% CI:−0.39, −0.19), and the direct effect was −0.42 (95% CI:−0.58, −0.28). Both indirect and direct effects had a bootstrap CI (95%) with no zero between their lower and upper limits, suggesting their significance and proving the mediating role of resilience between EI and AP.
| Variable | Effect relationship | Effect value | Deviation correction 95% CI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower limit | Upper limit | |||
| Emotional intelligence → Academic procrastination | Direct effect | −0.421 | −0.580 | −0.275 |
| Emotional intelligence → Academic procrastination | Indirect effect | −0.280 | −0.390 | −0.190 |
| Emotional intelligence → Academic procrastination | Total effect | −0.701 | −0.798 | −0.584 |
4 DISCUSSION
This study aims to analyse the relationship among EI, resilience and AP in nursing undergraduates and to examine the mediating role of resilience between EI and AP. It was primarily proved that resilience works as a mediator between EI and AP. This finding provides insight into the underlying mechanism between EI and AP in nursing undergraduates, highlighting the critical role of resilience.
Our study suggested that compared with students of other majors, nursing undergraduates had a higher AP level. A possible explanation for this is that medical students have a longer academic system, more complex learning content and greater learning pressure (Ren et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2018). As a member of medical students, nursing students also have AP (Li, 2012, 2015). Their higher tendencies to procrastinate on academic performance might be the results of heavy pressure caused by evaluative tasks, and they tend to take procrastination as a maladaptive coping strategy.
Based on questionnaires collected, several demographic factors were statistically significant for nursing undergraduate's AP levels. First of all, different AP scores were observed in different academic years: the higher the grade was, the higher the degree of procrastination was. This may be because as their learning proceeds, passion would be replaced by perfunctory things, and procrastination behaviour is prone to occur for those students with poor self-control. Besides, democratic education group and close-to-parents group had the lowest AP scores, suggesting family is an important factor in AP development. Parents with good educational backgrounds tend to frequently encourage their children and support them to develop interests in academic tasks. Therefore, it is urgent for parents to support and adjust their children's emotions to confront academic difficulties actively and correct procrastination. Nursing undergraduates differed in the item ‘how difficult do you feel in completing learning tasks’. This demonstrated that students' procrastination might be related to the degree of difficulty felt during learning tasks. If current task is easier, nursing students will be more confident in learning and less likely to procrastinate.
According to these results, it can be told that positive emotions can positively affect resilience while negative emotions do the opposite. There is a strong correlation between EI and resilience (Magnano et al., 2016). Individuals with high EI scores are more confident in their ability to perceive and regulate emotions, exhibiting healthier physiological responses and higher resilience (Armstrong et al., 2011). Similarly, the ability to regulate emotions effectively improves resilience (Sarrionandia et al., 2018), which helps to stimulate the ability to cope with setbacks. All these proved EI's significant positive effect on the prediction of resilience.
Current findings suggested that higher resilience is significantly associated with lower AP. Miraj M found a substantial relationship between resilience level and academic performance (Miraj et al., 2021). Resilience is considered one of the most important factors affecting academic performance (Ayala & Manzano, 2018). Furthermore, highly resilient students generally had a good belief in their ability to deal with academic issues, which reduced their tendency to delay task completion (Fullerton et al., 2021). A previous study has revealed the value of improving resilience in medical education (Thomas & Asselin, 2018). Our research showed that nursing undergraduates with higher resilience have lower AP levels. One possible explanation is that high resilience enhances individuals' sense of autonomy and control over their environment and increases their determination to complete tasks (Chen & Han, 2017). As a result, individuals with strong resilience can confidently apply their knowledge and skills and work harder on academic issues and responsibilities rather than avoiding them (Ko & Chang, 2019).
Resilience is an ideal mediating variable that may influence the effects of emotion to procrastination (Chen & Han, 2017; Liu et al., 2021). Resilience can play a role through two main models: one is the compensation model, which can be independent of risk factors and offset the impact of risk factors; the other is the protective factor model (Zimmerman et al., 2013). Individuals with high resilience showed fewer negative emotions than those with low resilience, which supports the compensation effect of resilience on EI (Cai et al., 2017). In Matthews' theory of self-regulated executive function, individuals unconsciously resort to procrastination strategies in order to resist the influence of negative emotions (Matthews & Wells, 2000). The level of resilience will affect AP (Qiu & Wang, 2015), academic achievement (Jiang & Xu, 2017) and academic achievement motivation (Song et al., 2013). EI is closely related to resilience, and the cultivation of resilience contributes to the improvement of EI, especially in the aspects of personal resilience, emotional tolerance, control and mental influence factors (Wang & Li, 2021). Self-assessment of emotion regulation and use of emotion can better predict college students' resilience (Wen et al., 2014). Resilience and EI could mutually promote each other, and the higher individual's EI is, the better one can control his or her own emotion (Zhang et al., 2019). In summary, incorporating EI development into course curricula may increase students' resilience, thereby indirectly influencing AP (Eckert et al., 2016; Schuenemann et al., 2022).
In view of the low scores in emotional use and emotional regulation of others, we recommend to improve the EI of nursing students. First of all, nursing teachers are required not only profound professional knowledge but also high humanistic literacy and EI so that they can understand psychological and emotional development rules and changes in nursing students more effectively. Second, related courses should be reasonably established, and emotional counselling for nursing students should be appropriately increased. Students should be encouraged to express their emotions and realize that their emotional changes will affect others. This is also why they must learn to find correct ways to decompress and rationally regulate and use of emotions.
The results of this investigation showed that the overall resilience score was at a medium level, and the self-improvement scores were relatively low, which suggested that we should start with self-improvement to enhance the level of resilience. As a starter, families and schools should provide more psychological support to nursing students. Parents can adopt democratic education methods, establish close relationships with their children, and pay more attention to their psychological changes. On the other hand, colleges can offer mental health education or counselling. This approach can combine group counselling with one-to-one counselling, analysing problems from multiple angles, helping students overcome psychological problems and improving their resilience.
This study showed that nursing undergraduate's professional recognition was at an average level, suggesting the significance of professional identity improvement. First, enrolment education for nursing students should be provided. Inviting experts to give lectures, and giving role models to enhance the professional identity and sense of belonging. Second, vocational education can be adopted while attaching importance to learning and appropriately organizing professional-related activities. Educators should train student's professional thinking and professional skills at the same time to improve their professional identities, thereby decreasing their procrastination level.
This study has some strengths and limitations. Outrunning in its large sample size and as the first known study exploring the underlying relationships among EI, resilience and AP in Chinese nursing undergraduates, this research provides a better understanding of the psychological factors in EI and AP interventions. However, this study only recruited nursing undergraduates from three universities, which may result in some selection bias. What is more, the proportion of male students was relatively small, and more male nurses are needed to clarify gender differences. In addition, this is only a cross-sectional study, which was unable to figure out the causal relationships among resilience, EI and AP. Longitudinal studies are needed for in-depth understanding of their interrelatedness.
5 CONCLUSION
Our study highlighted the relationship among EI, resilience and AP, as well as its underlying mechanism. Resilience mediated the impact of EI on AP. High EI may reduce AP level by increasing resilience. This study stressed the need of AP intervention, having important implications for nursing education. Improving EI and resilience have positive effect on AP. Students with lower resilience and EI are more prone to AP. This reminds college counsellors to pay more attention to AP and strengthen the EI and resilience establishment. Based on our research, we recommended two methods to correct AP: one is to encourage students to believe in their abilities and actively overcome difficulties instead of avoiding them; another is to strengthen their resilience. Nursing educators can correct procrastination by improving these influencing factors.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
BZ, QX, QM, JG, WZ and LH conceived, drafted and directed the study. BZ, QX, LH, HL and LL designed the study. BZ, QX, LL, JZ, QM and LH wrote the article. BZ, QX, LL, JZ, QM, JG, WZ and LH contributed to the critical revision of the manuscript. All authors, BZ, QX, LL, JZ, QM, JG, WZ and LH, read and approved the final manuscript.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the participants who participated in the study.
FUNDING INFORMATION
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82172853 and 82072699) and Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (No. 2021JQ-904 and 2020JQ-510).
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
ETHICS STATEMENT
This study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of REDACTED. We have obtained written informed consent from participants. All participants were informed that all personal information obtained in this study would be kept confidential.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data are available from the corresponding author upon request.
