Academic stress and suicidal ideation: moderating roles of coping style and resilience.

BACKGROUND: As a global phenomenon, suicide has generated a lot of concern. Scholars from various fields have conducted extensive research on the prevalence, causes, factors, and/or management or possible solutions to suicidal ideation. Despite the research efforts, suicidal cases worldwide still yell for more empirical attention. No doubt that some of the extant literature have specifically evidenced the causal links and factors in suicidal ideation. Yet, none had focused on the moderating roles of coping and resilience in an academic population. We therefore, examined the moderating roles of coping and resilience in the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation. METHOD: We used a cross-sectional design to sample 505 participants (329 males and 176 females) from three southern Nigerian universities. Participants who willingly indicated their participatory consent were administered a paper self-report questionnaire containing the Lakaev Academic Stress Response Scale (LASRS), Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI), Brief COPE (B-COPE), and Resilience Scale (RS-14). Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses of the study. Academic stress (r = 0.17; p.001) was found to be positively associated with suicidal ideation, whereas resilience (r = -.22; p.001) was found to be negatively associated with suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation had no significant correlation with adaptive coping style, but it did have a significant correlation with maladaptive coping (r = .15; p.001). The regression-based PROCESS macro showed that academic stress was a significant predictor of coping [ΔR2 = .03, F (1, 502) = 16.18, p = .01]. Academic stress was positively associated with suicidal ideation at low or moderate levels of adaptive coping styles. At high levels of adaptive coping styles, the association between academic stress and suicidal ideation was not significant. However, resilience negatively predicted suicidal ideation [R = .29, (R2 = .08), F(1, 499) = 19.94, p = .00] with academic stress showing a positive association with suicidal ideation at low and moderate levels of resilience, but for those with high resilience, academic stress was not associated with suicidal ideation. In sum, suicidal ideation is heightened by increased academic stress, with greater resilience ameliorating the tendency of academic stress resulting in suicidal ideation. Also, adopting maladaptive ways of coping promotes suicidal ideation among students, with resilience and adaptive coping strategies moderating the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation. It is therefore recommended that educational administrators, policy makers, lecturers, teachers, and tutors incorporate courses, teachings, and sessions that foster as well as inculcate resilience and efficient coping skills in pupils and students.

Improving knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English language speaking children in rural areas through educational digital storytelling.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Previous research efforts have shown the need for improvement of knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English Language speaking children in rural areas. Hence, the study at hand was designed to investigate the effect of using educational digital storytelling intervention to satisfy this need of English Language children in rural areas in Nigeria. METHOD: The study adopted a randomized control design involving a pretest, post-test, and follow-up measures. Eight-four children (n = 84) took part in the study. The HIV Knowledge Questionnaire (HIV-KQ-18) and the Perceived Risk of HIV Scale (PRHS) were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using t test statistics. RESULT: The educational digital storytelling intervention in appreciably improved knowledge and perception of English language children in rural areas who participated in the intervention concerning HIV/AIDS compared with their peers in the no-intervention control group. The improvement in knowledge and perception gained was also maintained throughout the follow-up evaluation period. CONCLUSION: The present study showed that the use of educational digital storytelling could improve knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English Language speaking children in rural areas. Educational digital storytelling intervention effectively improved knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among children in rural areas. In return, we recommend that rural sociologists, counselors, language and communication experts, child educators, and other professionals involved in public health especially, as it concerns children be skilled in the use and application of educational digital storytelling intervention procedures to facilitate the move towards adopting the method in their professional practices.