Development Strategies in Medical Education

Introduction: Social Support is defined as a mechanism of interpersonal communication that protects people from negative impact of stress. The high level of social support is attributed to the increase of academic self-efficacy and decrease of educational stress. Also, it   A reverse relationship between social support and test anxiety has been found. The present study aimed to identify the meditating role of self-efficacy in relationship between perceived support and test anxiety simultaneously.

Methods: This study was  carried out through descriptive-correlation research method  using scurvy technique. Thus, the number of 370 undergraduate students of Shahid Bahonar University  between 2012-2013 academic year were selected by cluster sampling. Data were collected through three questionnaires of test anxiety, self-efficacy and perceived social support and measured the study variables. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 21 and LISREL software.

Results:The structural equation model of effective factors on test anxiety selected appropriately  which showed that test predicting factors and relationships among them  entered into the model properly and credibly. The results of path analysis also showed that there   was a negative significant relationship between social support and test anxiety while the relationship between social support and self-efficacy deemed significantly positive. The variable of self-efficacy as a meditating variable was positively affected by social support but had a negative impact on test anxiety.

Conclusion: The results of total impact of model revealed that Perceived Social Support had the  greatest impact on decreasing students’ test anxiety.