Easing the Transition to College: Understanding the Mediating Factors of Trait Anxiety

Results

A series of regression analyses were run to examine the direct and indirect relationships between trait anxiety and age, total social support, gender, group, marital status, social desirability stress, family separation, loneliness, and depression. Figure 1 shows the full model with the regression weights and residual error, and Table1 shows correlations of the variable in the model. The full model accounted for 56.1% of the variance in trait anxiety with social desirability, stress, loneliness, and depression having significant direct effects and depression having the major contribution. Age had an indirect effect on trait anxiety via group and loneliness, social desirability, social desirability and loneliness, social desirability and depression, stress, stress and loneliness, and stress and depression. Total social support had an indirect effect on trait anxiety via loneliness, stress, stress and loneliness, depression, and stress and depression. Gender had an indirect effect on trait anxiety via depression

The hypothesized model includes a direct effect of family separation, loneliness, and depression, in addition to an indirect effect of age on trait anxiety via family separation, group and loneliness, and marital status and loneliness; an indirect effect of total social support on trait anxiety via loneliness, depression, stress and loneliness, and stress and depression; and an indirect effect of social desirability on trait anxiety via loneliness. The hypothesized model accounted for 52.4% of the variance in trait anxiety, see Figure 2. As hypothesized family separation, loneliness and depression had significant direct effects on trait anxiety with depression having the largest contribution. Total social support had an indirect effect on trait anxiety via loneliness, depression, stress and loneliness, and stress and depression; age had an indirect effect on trait anxiety via family separation, and group and loneliness. However, contrary to the research hypothesis gender was not significantly related to social desirability or stress, as well as marital status not significantly contributing to loneliness. However this model did not perform as well as the full model, Q=0.703, W=133.397, p<.001.

A trimmed model that only included significant paths from the full model was also tested. The trimmed model accounted for 55.0% of the variance in trait anxiety, see Figure 3. All significant pathways from the full model remained significant after removing non-significant pathways and the trimmed model performed as well as the full model, Q=0.946, W=21.442, p=.432.

Abstract Introduction Methods Results Discussion References Full Path Model Hypothesized Path Model Reduced Path Model Correlation Table