Relationship between Self-Concept, Procrastination, Test Anxiety, Self-Esteem, and Gender among Malaysian Medical Undergraduates

• Main Author: Yui, Law Mei
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: HF Commerce
• Online Access: http://ur.aeu.edu.my/777/1/Relationship%20Between%20Self-Concept%2C%20Procrastination%2C%20Test%20Anxiety%2C%20Self-Esteem%20and%20gender%20Among%20Malaysian%20Medical%20Undergraduates.pdf.pdf; http://ur.aeu.edu.my/777/2/Relationship%20Between%20Self-Concept%2C%20Procrastination%2C%20Test%20Anxiety%2C%20Self-Esteem%20and%20gender%20Among%20Malaysian%20Medical%20Undergraduates.pdf-1-24.pdf; http://ur.aeu.edu.my/777/; https://online.fliphtml5.com/sppgg/rczj/?1597215902743

Medical education is regarded as one of the most exhaustive courses. Test anxiety, which is related to demotivation, higher psychological distress, and lower academic performance is a widespread phenomenon in medical education. Failure to deal with prolong test anxiety could result in severe personal and professional consequences to medical undergraduates. This quantitative study was undertaken to build a partial least squares (PLS) model, which concurrently illustrate the direct and indirect effects of personal self-concept, active procrastination, test anxiety, explicit self-esteem, and gender on medical undergraduates. This study is interested in personal self-concept and active procrastination because they have not been investigated alongside test anxiety. Five hundred medical undergraduates from three universities in the Klang Valley participated in this study. The respondents completed a set of self-reported questionnaire that comprised Personal Self-Concept Questionnaire, Active Procrastination Scale, Test and Examination Anxiety Measure, and Rosenberg SelfEsteem Scale. Specifically, the significant differences of test anxiety between preclinical and clinical students, the predictive relationship among personal self-concept, active procrastination, and test anxiety, moderating effect of gender in between personal self-concept and test anxiety, and mediating effect of explicit self-esteem in between active procrastination and test anxiety were investigated. SPSS version 22 and SmartPLS 2.0 were employed to analyse the data and build the model for path analysis. The results reveal that medical undergraduates experienced moderate level of test anxiety (M = 93.77, SD = 15.55), clinical students reported significantly higher test anxiety than pre-clinical students (t(498) = −2.30, p < .05); personal self-concept and active procrastination were significantly predicted test anxiety (t-value = 6.44, p < .001; t-value = 5.42, p < .001, respectively); gender did not moderate the relationship between personal self-concept and test anxiety (t-value = .87, p > .05); and explicit self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between active procrastination and test anxiety (t-value = −3.89, p < .001). Interventions aimed at reducing the prevalence of test anxiety among medical students should consider methods that augment personal self-concept, self-esteem, and convert passive procrastination into active procrastination.