When the goal is to be less stressed: a naturalistic investigation of academic and self-care goal completion

The demands of college are synonymous with stress for many students, with stress generally being related to academic success and posing a challenge for academic goals and self-care behaviors. Individual difference factors such as resilience and need for cognition may impact this stress experience as well as academic and self-care behaviors. Prior to the current study, self-care had yet to be studied in the same context as academic goal completion. The results of the present research revealed that students were significantly better at completing academic goals versus self-care goals and that self-care goal completion predicted completion of academic goals. Further, I found greater self-care goal completion was associated with lower perceived stress following the goal completion period. These findings have implications related to student wellbeing, as this knowledge of the benefits of setting and completing self-care goals could provide justification for students to prioritize these types of tasks.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Year dc:date.available

2022

Author dc:creator

• Wells, Stephanie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shelton, Jill
• Warren, Amye; Black, Kristen Jennings, 1991-; Williamson, Cindy
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Goal (Psychology)
• Stress (Psychology)

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/760

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1917