Healthcare Students' Approaches to Studying in Association With Self-Efficacy and Mental Health: Repeated Cross-Sectional Analysis

There has been increasing concern about student mental health, self-efficacy, and their impact on approaches to learning. Little is known about how these three constructs relate and change over time. This is a second study exploring graduate occupational and physical therapy students' approaches to studying, mental health factors, self-efficacy, and changes in relationships between these factors over time. We found that higher self-efficacy was related to higher deep approach ratings, while higher mental health ratings were related to higher strategic approach ratings and lower surface approach ratings. Self-efficacy and mental health show relatively consistent associations over time with student approaches to learning.

Automated summary

Little is known about the relationship and change between student mental health, self-efficacy, and approaches to learning. This study explores the performance of graduate occupational and physical therapy students in learning approaches, mental health factors, and self-efficacy, finding that self-efficacy is related to deep learning approaches, while mental health is related to strategic learning approaches and surface learning approaches.