Introduction

Generally, stress refers to a person’s physical or emotional response to the demands or pressures of daily life [1]. Stress among students could be associated to various factors such as individual factors and environmental factors. The example of individual factors are physical condition, motivation, and personality type of the students themselves. In addition, environmental factors cover several aspects such as family, work, facilities, environment, lecturers, and others [2].

According to Gunawati, and Listiara [3], factors related to stress among students are namely internal factors and external factors. The internal factors include mindset, personality, and beliefs meanwhile the external factors cover heavy lessons workloads, pressure to achieve high academic excellence, social status encouragement, and parent competition with each other.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, a population-based survey showed post-crisis mental health among the students [4]. From this perspective, the academic context was affected by the lockdown worldwide. Indeed, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that in consequence of the massive universities’ closure, the scheduled activities and student’s accommodations were suspended, all interactions were shifted to online platforms, leading to a major change in students’ academic life [5].

In most cases, the literature has documented the negative influence of COVID-19 pandemic on the first-year undergraduate students’ stress to academic. For instance, Sundarasen et al. [6] investigated the psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on university students in Malaysia. The stress was measured by using Zung’s [7] self-rating anxiety scale (SAS). Out of 359 first-year undergraduate students studied, 93.6% reported low stress, 3.9% reported moderate stress, and 2.5% reported high stress. Furthermore, similar study was conducted by Putri and Ariana in Indonesian context where the stress level was measured by Student-life Stress Inventory [8]. The findings show that out of 252 first-year undergraduate students studied, 110 of them (43.6%) reported low stress, 89 respondents reported moderate stress (35.3%), and 53 respondents (21%) reported high stress.

According to Son, Hegde, Smith, Wang, and Sasangohar [9], there were stressors which affected the academic’s life among students during COVID-19 pandemic. These are their own health and the health of loved ones, difficulty in concentration, sleeping habits, social relation/social isolation, academic performance, financial difficulties, depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts.

COVID-19 outbreak may enhance fear among the students such as their own health and their loved ones. They were worried about the family and relatives who were more susceptible to the virus such as older adults, those who have existing severe health problems, pregnant women, and women who have just gave birth. Students were also concerned about their family whose jobs increased the risk of exposure to COVID-19 such as social and health care workers.

There are various changes in terms of educational approaches which potentially lead to difficulty in concentrating on academic work. Son et al. [9] found that most of the students (173; 89%) stated that their home is distractive. For them, home is more appropriate place to than to study (79; 46%). In fact, students were easier to be bothered by their family members at home. Other factors influencing students’ concentration were social media, internet, and video games (19; 11%). Some students (18; 10%) mentioned that online classes were subject to diversion due to social interaction deficiency and continuous attention to computer screen. In addition, monotone life patterns mentioned by some students could negatively affect concentration on academic work (5; 3%).

Students reported that their sleep patterns were disrupted due to COVID-19 pandemic. Further, they mostly stated that they tended to stay up later or wake up later they did before the pandemic. It could be associated with the need to be having online meeting through online platforms which could be carried out anytime and anywhere. Another irritative impact brought by the COVID-19 pandemic was irregular sleep patterns such as inconsistent time to go to bed and to wake up from day to day.

Son et al. [9] stated that most students (167; 86%) answered that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the social isolation. Over half of students (91; 54%) stated that it limited their interactions with friends significantly. Some students (52; 31%) stated that they worried about a lack of in-person interactions. Others (9; 5%) mentioned that disturbance to their outdoor activities have affected their mental health.

Furthermore, in 2020, Son et al. [9] found that majority of students (159; 82%) concerned on their academic performance impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fear of lower performance and delay in completion of studies are also the reasons to induce stress among students during COVID-19. The biggest challenge was the transition to classes through online platforms (61; 38%). In particular, students concerned on sudden changes in the syllabus, the quality of the classes, technical issues with online applications, and the difficulty of online learning. Some students (36; 23%) worried about progress in research and class projects because of social restrictions to keep social distancing and the lack of physical interactions with other students. Others (23; 14%) stated the uncertainty about their grades on the learning through online platforms to be a major stressor. In addition, others (12; 8%) indicated their lower motivation to learn and tendency to procrastinate.

Majority of students revealed their concerns about the financial situations which were impacted by COVID-19. Some students stated that COVID-19 has affected employment opportunities such as part-time jobs and internships. Others expressed the financial difficulties of their family members, mostly parents, who got laid off and got pay cut during the pandemic.

Regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study by Son et al. [9] found that 44% of students mentioned that they were having some depressive thoughts. Most students attributed the depressive thoughts to factors such as loneliness (33%), insecurity (12%), hopelessness (10%), academic performance concerns (8%), and overthinking (5%).

Out of 195 students, 16 students revealed that the pandemic led to suicidal thoughts with 5% experiencing these thoughts as low level and 3% as moderate level. The reasons were dealing to academic performance, problems with family as they returned home, and fear of insecurity and uncertainty.

Lazarus and Folkman [10] defined that psychological stress is a relationship between an individual and the environment which is valued by the way people exceed their sources and endanger their well-being. This relationship is going through two significant phases that are cognitive appraisals and coping. The cognitive appraisal is defined as “the process of categorizing an encounter, and its various facets, with respect to its significance for well-being” (Lazarus and Folkman [10], p. 31). Furthermore, cognitive appraisal covers primary appraisal and secondary appraisal.

Primary appraisal manages to answer “Am I trouble or being benefited, now or in the future, and in what ways?”. When people answer “yes”, it means that the situation can be classified as threat, challenge or loss. Loss suggests harms occurred meanwhile threat and challenge can be meant past experiences. Threat refers to physical and psychological potential while challenge means that someone’s concern on his achievement, reward, and growth; however, this threat and challenge are not correspondent with. Lazarus and Folkman [10] mentioned that threat and challenge appraisals are not two ends of a single continuum. For example, Folkman and Lazarus [10] showed that students waiting for an exam evaluate it as threatening and challenging event. Secondary appraisal refers to an assessment of coping resources. It has an attempt to answer “Can I cope with this situation?”. It reflects someone’s ability to deal with the situation because one has the resources (physical, social, psychological, or material).

Lazarus and Folkman [10] proposed that coping has two main functions. First is to regulate emotions or distresses in the stressful situation (emotion-focused coping). The second one is to manage the problem causing the stress by directly changing the elements of the stressful encounter (problem-focused coping). Even though both are used in most stressful situation, they are nevertheless dependent in terms of the way one appraises the situation and of the antecedents of the model.

Students who experience stressful conditions will have a negative impact on the performance. For instance, when the students experience prolong stress, the stress may affect their academic achievement and lead into loss of enthusiasm which could be associated with low GPA [11].

Oboth and Odiemo [12] found that that only 35.6% of students experiencing low level of stress while the rest 64.4% were experiencing moderate to high levels of stress. The result showed that stress level and academic performance had a significant relationship. Regression analysis showed that the higher the level of stress, the lower the academic performance among the students. This finding is consistent with other studies which were conducted in Malaysia and Indonesia. In Malaysia, Elias, Ping, and Abdullah [13] study which was conducted at Universiti Putra Malaysia, revealed that stress is shown to be significantly correlated to academic performance. On the other hand, in Indonesia, in Tumonggor, Sutanti, Evan, Winata [14] study which was conducted among the students of Krida Wacana Christian University class of 2017 to 2019 during the COVID-19 pandemic, shown that there is a relationship between stress and student’s academic performance.

Furthermore, to define protective factors of stress among the students, some studies were initiated. Majority of researches investigated the relationship between self-efficacy and adversity quotient. Somaratne, Jayawardena, and Perera [15] found that level of adversity quotient was significantly related to the level of stress indicating that the higher level of adversity quotient, the lower level of stress. By using Pearson Product-Moment correlation analysis, the results showed that there was a strong negative relationship between perceived stress and all the sub-dimensions of AQ (control, ownership, reach, endurance). By having higher levels of control, students could be proactively dealing with adverse events and are competent to turn obstacles into opportunity. The negative relationship of ownership indicates that students with high AQ levels tend to feel liable to improve the obstacles and face them responsibly. Besides that, the negative relationship between reach and stress indicates that the respondents with high AQ levels do not let obstacles to reach other areas of life that restrict the negative impacts to that particular event. Similarly, as implied by the negative relationship between endurance and stress, the respondents with high AQ tend to find solutions to overcome the obstacles.

On the other hand, Lee, Kim and Wachholtz [16] found that perceived stress was negatively associated with both self-efficacy among the 279 undergraduate students from three universities in Seoul, and Dae Jeon Korea. In terms of gender distribution, 188 (67.4%) of the participants were female and 91 (32.6%) students were male. It was reported that that self-efficacy and stress among students showed a negative significant relationship indicating also that the higher self-efficacy, the lower stress level of individual. This means if students were confident in their ability to meet the challenges, they would experience positive interpretation of current situation, leading to enhance the chance to avoid having stress.

The rational of conducting current systematic review on the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress and academic performance is to enhance knowledge on stress among the students during COVID-19 pandemic and to examine the methodological approach in researching student’s stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hence, the present systematic review aims to review research manuscripts during the COVID-19 pandemic which focus on the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress and academic performance on a range of undergraduate student. Ultimately, based on this systematic review, we will recommend the direction for future research.

Materials and methods

Search strategy

An example for the search strategy is the writer when searching article in PubMed will the keyword ‘self-efficacy’ AND ‘adversity quotient’ AND ‘stress’ AND ‘academic performance’ AND ‘student’ AND ‘COVID-19 pandemic’. The time frame of the articles is December 2019 –August 2022. This time frame reflects the emergence COVID-19 and the latest information of the pandemic. One reviewer will select articles against the inclusion criteria based on their title, abstract and full-text copies. Each accepted full-text manuscript will be analyzed by exploring their methodology such as study design, sampling method, sample size, psychological tools used, and their result on the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress, and academic performance among the undergraduate students.

All selected articles will be obtained for data synthesis. The study selection will be done in concordance with the flow chart for systematic review (Fig 1). However, disparities in reviewer selections will be resolved at a meeting between reviewers prior to selected articles being retrieved.

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Fig 1. PRISMA flow chart.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278635.g001

Only quantitative studies will be sought. No study design limits will be imposed on the search, but there will be time or language limits although only studies during the COVID-19 pandemic and in English will be included.

Discussion

The systematic review focuses on the published journal articles discussing the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress, and academic performance among undergraduate students. It should cover published full-text English articles and studies which examine the undergraduate student population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Five databases will be used, namely the PubMed Central (PMC), PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases. The articles which will be selected for this study are the articles published between December 2019 until August 2022.

Reviewers will select articles against the inclusion criteria based on their title, abstract and full-text copies. Each accepted full-text manuscript will be analyzed by using narrative synthesis to explore their methodology such as study design, sampling method, sample size, psychological tools used, and their result on the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress, and academic performance among the undergraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data supporting the findings of this study will be made available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.

To reach the reliable conclusions, the risk of bias of each individual study is determined using two tools. The first is the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies and the second is The Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias.

Supporting information