Perceived Social Support, Resilience, Mindfulness, and Learning Engagement

Among Chinese vocational students, investigators report that higher perceived social support was associated with higher learning engagement, with emotional resilience and mindfulness modeled as mediators and depressive and anxiety symptoms (PHQ-4) modeled as a moderator.

Using a cross-sectional design, the authors administered an online questionnaire to 1545 vocational college students in China (mean age 19.27 years), controlling for gender as a covariate. Measures included the Perceived Social Support Scale (12 items, adapted from Zimet et al.; Cronbach’s α=0.95), the Adolescent Emotional Resilience Questionnaire (11 items; α=0.91), the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS, 15 items, Chinese revision; α=0.93), the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) for depressive and anxiety symptoms over the prior two weeks (α=0.90), and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students (UWES-S-9) for learning engagement (α=0.96).

Perceived social support showed a positive direct association with learning engagement (β=0.32, p<0.001). The authors also report associations consistent with mediation: perceived social support was associated with emotional resilience (β=0.52, p<0.001) and mindfulness (β=0.24, p<0.001), while emotional resilience (β=0.36, p<0.001) and mindfulness (β=0.14, p<0.001) were each associated with learning engagement. Emotional resilience represented 32.64% of the estimated total effect in the model, mindfulness represented 5.90%, and the sequential chain emotional resilience→mindfulness (as modeled) represented 5.75%. Overall, the mediation results are presented as concentrated in emotional resilience, with smaller portions attributed to mindfulness and to the sequential chain.

Depressive and anxiety symptoms (PHQ-4) significantly moderated the mindfulness-to-engagement path (interaction β=−0.09, p<0.001). In their simple-slope reporting, they describe the positive association between mindfulness and learning engagement as weakening as symptom levels increased, while remaining statistically significant at both higher and lower symptom levels as analyzed.