Academic stress is one of the major factors that undermine college students’ wellbeing. A high level of academic stress is associated with poor academic performance (Sohail, 2013) and psychiatric disorders, such as depression (Bedewy & Gabriel, 2015).

Perceived autonomy support from the teachers directly predicts increases in university students’ self-regulation (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). Self-regulation may help students to cope with academic stress (Hj Ramli et al., 2018), and decrease anxiety over time (Black & Deci, 2000). Therefore, perceived autonomy support might indirectly reduce academic stress through self-regulated learning.

Perception of increased autonomy support from instructors predicted the adoption of mastery goals in college students (Akram, Sultan, & Ijaz, 2014) because it promotes their interest or enjoyment (Black & Deci, 2000). Mastery goals provide greater feelings of competence, which may lead to positive educational outcomes (Senko et al., 2011). Therefore, autonomy support may indirectly reduce academic stress through mastery goal orientation. The proposed study aims to answer the following questions:

1. Does perceived autonomy support mitigate students’ academic stress directly?

2. Does perceived autonomy support mitigate students’ academic stress indirectly through mastery goal orientation and self-regulated learning? 

Data were collected from undergraduate and graduate students (N=366) in China, 39.6% males and 60.4% females, 78.7% undergraduate and 21.3% graduate students, with a mean age of 21.15. Four scales were adapted from existing literature for this study: The Perceived Academic Stress Scale (Bedewy & Gabriel, 2015), Learning Climate Questionnaire (Williams & Deci, 1996), Self-regulated Learning Scale (Iwamoto et al., 2017) and Task Goal Orientation Scale (Midgley et al., 1998). A 6-point Likert scale was used throughout the survey. The survey was administered through a mobile app popular in China.

Confirmatory analysis was run on academic stress scale to examine its structure and four subconstructs were identified: stress to perform, time restraints, the perception of workload and academic self-perceptions. Mediation analyses with academic stress as the dependent variable produced poor model fit. Therefore, eight models were run separately with each of the four subconstructs of academic stress as the independent variable, autonomy support as the dependent variable, and self-regulated learning and mastery goal orientation as the mediators (see results in Table 2). Acceptable model fit indices include CFI0.90, TLI0.90, RMSEA<0.80, SRMR<0.50. Direct effects of autonomy support were strong. It negatively predicts stress to perform (b=-.17, p<.03), the perception of workload (b=-.17, p<.02) and stress from academic self-perception (b=-.36, p<.02), but not for time restraints (b=.03, p<.71). This strongly supports the importance of instructor’s autonomy support indirectly reducing different aspects of academic stress. There were full mediations between autonomy support and academic self-perception, with self-regulated learning (b=-.40, p<.01) and mastery goal orientation (b=-.20, p=.001) as the mediators. Autonomy support was associated with approximately .12 points higher in score of academic self-perception, as mediated by self-regulated learning, and .09 points higher as mediated by mastery goal orientation, indicating autonomy support could significantly help to mitigate stress from poor academic self-perception through self-regulated learning (see Figure 1) and mastery goal orientation.

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