CC BY
17
Perspectives of Science & Education
International Scientific Electronic Journal ISSN 2307-2334 (Online)
Available: psejournal.wordpress.com/archive21/21-01/ Accepted: 15 December 2020 Published: 28 February 2021
Abdullah M. Al-Ansi
Students anxiety and recruitment during Covid-19 pandemic: role of university, specialization and employment expectation
The problem and the aim of the study. Most undergraduate students at last year of university have anxiety to seek for the future job. Looking for job and moving to new chapter of their life is often accompanied by anxiousness and generates psychological stress. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the role of university, specialization and employment expectation in decreasing the students' anxiousness.
Research methods. The main method of this research is quantitative approach by using surveys. Data were collected by surveying of 400 students at the last year of university distributed under three categories: medical science, natural science and social studies in Yogyakarta city, Indonesia. Purposive sampling was used to select students based on their specialization of study. Regression path analysis was employed to examine the role of university, specialization and possibility of employment on decreasing the students' anxiety in finding suitable job.
Results. The Results indicate that university has no direct role in helping students get job but has indirect impact on shaping students' knowledge, skills and self-confidence to prepare them for future job and this leads to negative and significant impact on students' anxiousness with (P = -.138 and -.260; p < 0,01) respectively. Specialization has negative and significant impact (P = -.207, -.198; p < 0,01) for medical and natural science students and low negative and significant (P = -.018; p < 0,01) for social science students on their anxiety. Finally, employment expectation for most of the students was fair and has positive impact on their anxiety (P = .012, .090 and .124; p < 0,05) respectively.
Conclusion. This research revealed the increasing impact of Covid-19 pandemic to the students' anxiety due to continuous influence of the virus during the 2020. Theoretical, social and practical implications have been discussed as part of this research as well.
Keywords: students anxiety, recruitment, post-secondary education, specialization, employment expectation, pedagogical issues
For Reference:
Al-Ansi, A. M. (2021). Students anxiety and recruitment during Covid-19 pandemic: role of university, specialization and employment expectation. Perspektivy nauki i obrazovania -Perspectives of Science and Education, 49 (1), 404-413. doi: 10.32744/pse.2021.1.27
_Introduction
he Mental health problems are prevalent widely at university [1]. One of these problem is the students' anxiousness. Anxiousness disorder is the most psychological problems facing students during their period of studying at university where almost 11.9% of university students are suffering from this problem [2]. At university, there are many factors increases students' anxiety including academic uncertainty, financial insecurity, loneliness and at last stage of studying anxiety of finding a suitable job. The anxiety is resulted from many reasons including thinking of transition to work environment [3], change from familiar environment to new environment [4], and difficulties to get a suitable job and losing some friendships.
Recently, outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has caused many problems increasing the students' anxiousness. Covid-19 increases the anxiety and psychological stress and quarantine sequences lead to more depression, anger, insomnia, emotional disturbance, irritability and mental problems [5; 6]. Previous studies have reported the significant impact of anxiety and stress on students including: depression, stress and anxiety among Malaysian students [7], psychological investigation of university students in Jilin, china [8] and socio-cultural environment and lifestyle factors on the psychological health of university students in Dhaka, Bangladesh [9]. In addition, chance to find a job in these circumstances is more difficult while many of people have lost their job during the pandemic.
On the other hand, university plays important part in helping students to cope their anxiety. Besides educational attainment, increasing students' knowledge, skills and self-confidence, there are many of training programs, workshops, professional confidence and civic involvement [10]. University role is to fulfill students' need and satisfaction to find a job of their interest which leads to increasing its enrollment and achieving its goals [11]. In addition, choosing the major of study is important step in the student's life. According to Beggs et al. [12] choosing good major is important to determine the future goals, matching abilities and interests [13] and fulfilling the requirements for future job. Students choose their major based on different internal factors such as belief, personality, attitudes, interest [14], image of person [15] and external factors including job availability, employment opportunity [16], job security, work load, prestige of degree and university [17] as well as influence of parents [18], friends [19] and teachers [20].
Employability of students after university and transition to labor market have not been investigated widely in previous studies, although of awareness of students' need and satisfaction. Expectations of employment for students are linked to increasing to tuition fees [21], educational choices [22], expected benefits [23] and economic situation of the country [24]. Be-sides, some studies reported that fresh graduated students are not able to negotiate their rights and don't know their employment conditions [25]. In addition, students have different expectations about their future job. They are likely taking into consideration labor market conditions in forming their expectations and how friendship relation will be kept after graduation [26]. Finally, rapid change in labor market and using technologies, robots, economic globalization, digital revelation and service-based production have increased the requirements of employment. Students need to improve their abilities, knowledge and skills to be capable to have a good job in the future.
This research investigates the role of university in supporting students' knowledge and self-confidence to find a better job in the future and how university impact on their anxiety. The role of specialization in three different categories including medical science, natural science and social science in decreasing students' anxiousness and how if there are any differences among three categories. Finally, the employment expectations among three categories and how they impact on the students' anxiousness. This paper is structured as follows: the method part discussed the model employed to measure students' anxiousness through university, specialization and employment expectation. The finding part includes the bivariate and regression analysis of all variables and the discussion part included the main distributions followed by conclusions and recommendations.
Materials and methods
The Quantitative approach was used to conduct this research. Data was collected through online survey of 400 students at the last year of university (2020) in Yogyakarta universities, Indonesia. Employing purposive sampling to choose students based on their specialization which divided into three categories: medical science, natural science and social science. The reason of dividing sample to three categories were based on the differences of their expectations about future job and different of anxiety. Data analysis was conducted by using the descriptive statistic for mean and standard deviation and correlation and regression analysis to measure the impact of research variables on decreasing student's anxiety. The answers were limited to Likert scale five order categories: strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1).
The participants included 400 undergraduate students at the last year of university, 164 (41%) males and 236 (59%) females, from different universities throughout Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Range of age for students was between (21-25) years old (M = 23.1 and SD = 1.34). Based on students' specializations, there were three categories: Medical science included medicine faculty, dentistry, nursing, midwifery and medical assistant 121 (30%) students, natural science included applied science, engineering, art and life science 146 (36%) students and social science included literature, art, education, economic, management and humanitarian studies 133 (34%) students.
To examine the role of university, specialization and students' expectation about their future job and the impact of these variables on decreasing their anxiety, survey was divided into 4 parts in addition to demographic paragraph. The first part of questionnaire included the role of university on three stages: direct help and indirect help through increasing students' knowledge and self-confidence. The second part of survey included questions for three groups based on specialization: medical science, natural science and social science. Dividing students to three groups was related to different perceptions among students about their future job and anxiety. The third part included the expectations of the future job based on three categories due to the same reason. Expectations were divided into three to examine which group has the highest, moderate and lowest expectations. Finally, the last part of survey included items of anxiety test enable researcher to conduct the impact of three variables upon students' anxiousness.
Table 1
Variables and Indicators of Research
No. Variables Indicators Items
1. University Role Direct Help Improving Knowledge and Skills Increasing Self-Confidence 9 Items
2. Specialization Medical Science Natural Science Social Science 7 Items
3. Employment Expectation High Expectation Medium Expectation Low Expectation 7 Items
4. Students Anxiousness (TAI), The five-factor model and The AMAS-C 8 Items
Before conducting survey, researcher has formed the questions and employed students as mediators at different universities to make sure these students will be representative for their classes. All these mediators where chosen carefully to share questionnaire for the right students based on the research criteria (students of last year). After designing the questionnaire, researcher has share the link in what's app and through email for limited number of students and lectures to evaluate questions. Answers of 18 respondents were collected and process of revision directly started to ensure the questions is understandable and clear. For reliability test, Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.84 which is acceptable for conducting survey. Questions were distributed again through what's app group and email for students at the last year of university and when the number reached 400 for acceptable responses, researcher has end the time.
University role: The first 9 items of the questionnaire were used to explore the role of university in assisting students to get their future job. Three first items were related to the direct support of university, three second items identified role of university in enhancing students' knowledge and skills and last three items of the first part of questionnaire explore the role of university in increasing students' self-confidence. Questions were derived and developed by researcher of previous studies in the filed including students' perspectives in university sup-port [27], affairs and service of students at higher education [28] and best practices of student's service in high education [29].
Specialization: The second part of questionnaire included 7 items to examine the perspectives and perceptions of students about their specialization. The determinants were derived of some previous studies including: entry requirements [30], skilled achieved, finding job easily, advise of majors, opportunity to get suitable practice, personal interest of subject, expectation to learn something new and reputation [17], familiarity of specialization, chance to get a future job, parent advices, diversity of jobs and curiosity [16]. In addition to faculty website [30], Teachers [20], friends [19], parents [18].
Employment expectation: The third part of questionnaire included 7 items to measure the expectations of undergraduate students to get their future job. Questions was derived from different studies including: factors of selecting specialization by business graduates [31], future job on choice business [32]. Anxiety: The last 8 items of questionnaire were used to assess the anxiety of students at the last year of university. Questions of anxiety were derived from different studies including Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) with revision due to the title of this research [33], State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y [34, 30], The five-factor model for anxiety developed by Benson & El-Zahhar [36], Lowe et al, [37] and Wren & Benson [38], in addition to The AMAS-C test by Reynolds, Richmond and Lowe [31].
_Research results
Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) for all variables. Mean for students' anxiety was high related to ambiguous about their future job. Role of universities were explained by low direct help but high support for students' knowledge, skills and self-confidence. The mean for specialization for three categories was high too related to students believe in their abilities and knowledge of what they are studying. Finally, table 1 shows the expectation of students about their future job which was little different and includes low expectation for all three categories.
Table 2
Bivariate Correlation and Descriptive Statistics N = 400
1. 2.a 2.b 2.c 3.a 3.b 3.c 4.a 4.b 4.c
1. Anxiousness
2. University Role a. Direct Help .023
b. Improving Knowledge & Skills -.576** .634**
c. Increasing Self-Confidence -.487** .710** .589**
3. Specialization a. Medical Science -.612** .433** .423** .653**
b. Natural Science -.563** .362** .465** .503** .872**
c. Social Science -.342** .435** .376** .730** .765** .750*
4. Employment Expectation a. Medical Science .105* .264** .354** .522** .230* .438** .254*
b. Natural Science .097* .156* .435** .642** .167* .258* .147* .342**
c. Social Science .053* .135* .376** .453** .099* .167* .120* .237** .245*
Mean Standard Deviation 3.93 1.77 2.05 1.12 4.22 0.85 3.97 0.88 4.26 0.80 3.95 0.62 2.97 0.86 2.33 0.75 2.18 1.07 1.93 0.78
* - p < 0,05 ** - p < 0,01
Correlation between variables was examined in table (1) as well. Students' anxiousness was negatively large related to the role of university in supporting students' knowledge, improving their skills and increasing their self-confidence, whereas students believe that university don't do much for their direct employment. Student's anxiety and specialization have negative relationship and large while for students' expectations for three categories was positive and small (less than 0.3). Based on Green and Salkind [20], correlation is small (.10), medium (.30) and large (.50), when interpreting the magnitude of the correlation coefficients.
In table 2, the role of university through three indicators (Direct help, improving the knowledge and skills and increasing the self-confidence of the students), role of specialization representative by three categories and employment expectations based on the same categories (Medical Science, Natural Science and Social science students) on students' anxiousness were analyzed. The results shows that university direct help was insignificant
while university indirect role through improving skills and knowledge of students and increasing their self-confidence was significant with (Beta = -.138 and -.260) respectively. University indirect role has negative impact on students' anxiousness. Specialization for medical, natural and social science also has negative and significant impact on students' anxiousness as (Beta = -.207, -.198 and -.018) respectively while employment expectation has small positive and significant impact on the students' anxiousness (P < .05, Beta = .012, .090 and .124) respectively. These results explains that both university indirect role and specialization decrease the anxiety while employment expectations show that students are more anxious about possibility to get a suitable jobs. Finally, the regression model was able to explain that variances of students' anxious-ness with 60% (R2 = .601) at the last year of university.
Table 3
Regression Modal Analysis
Unstandardized Coefficients Beta Sig. R2
B Std. Error
(Constant) 5.741 1.137 .000 .601
University Direct Help .034 .082 .057 .365
Improving Knowledge & Skills -.103 .108 -.138 .003 **
Increasing Self-Confidence -.194 .107 -.260 .007 **
Specialization: Medical Science -.213 .174 -.207 .000 **
Specialization: Natural Science -.192 .155 -.198 .005 **
Specialization: Social Science -.014 .108 -.018 .008 **
Expectation: Medical Science .012 .135 .140 .000 *
Expectation: Natural Science .090 .089 .146 .000 *
Expectation: Social Science .124 .122 .145 .000 *
a. Depended Variable: Students Anxiousness, * - p < 0,05 ** - p < 0,01
According to the current condition of Covid-19 pandemic and Based on the table 3, the results revealed that university has no direct role in helping students to get their future job although university has indirect role in preparing students to gain the main skills and increasing their confidence and knowledge to able to be ready for labor market. This research also revealed important contribution due to the difference in specialization where medical science and natural science majors have negative impact on anxiety. Social science major also have negative and significant impact on students' anxiousness but very low.
Discussion
The main question of this research was to investigate the students' anxiousness through university role, specialization and employment expectation. To fulfill this objective, 400 undergraduate students were selected from three faculties including medical science, natural science and social science in different universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Anxiety is known as a serious issue between undergraduate students during their studies.
Many factors explain student's anxiety, stress and depression such as transition to new environment [12], difficulties in academic studies, increasing hours of schedule [21] and addition-al problems related to quarantine [6; 18]. In addition, this research revealed high anxiety among students about their future job at the final year of university. Employment expectations revealed that students in three majors have low expectation to have a job which leads to positive impact and significant on their anxiousness. Degree of students' worry about future job was lower among medical science followed by natural science and in the third place social science students. These results were expected based due to the problem of Covid-19 where many peoples lost their jobs and many of businesses had limited their activities or in a worse situations totally forced to close.
Regarding role of university in decreasing students' anxiousness, university play important role in improving skills and knowledge and increasing their confidence of their-self which leads to declining their anxiety. Previous studies proved the role of university in decreasing student's anxiety including [11]. In addition, this research explains that specialization has negative impact on anxiety with different rating between different fields of studies. Previous studies proved this results including [13; 14].
Figure 1 Path Analysis among Indicators of Variables and Anxiety
Regarding students' expectations about future job, this research showed low expectations related to many reasons including many students feel that they are under-prepared for labor market due to additional skills such as presentation skills, ICT literature, leadership which are very valuable by employers [24]. In addition, many of employers apply many requirements, experiences and structural contradictions of employment market [35] where fresh graduates have lack of some of these requirements.
_Conclusion
In this research, researcher demonstrated a significant negative relationship among indirect role of university, specialization, and students' anxiousness in addition, a significant positive relationship between expectation of employment and anxiety of students. This explains that, university plays important role in supporting and improving students' knowledge, skills and self-confidence to prepare them for future job but not to give them a direct help. Students who are majoring in medical and natural science have more confident to find suitable jobs while social science students have low expectation about their future job even most though of the students have showed their anxiety to get a better job. These results show the most concern of students at final year of university where they are supposed to celebrate their graduation.
Students' anxiousness is a serious problem in every educational institution. People always anxious when they try new things or transit from place to place. University is recommended to do more efforts to help its students to cope anxiety through connecting them to labor market, developing the curriculum to include important courses about job negotiation and regulations, introducing specific majors related to increasingly change in labor market, giving more practices, workshops and training about future jobs. This research included precious information related to role of major in decreasing anxiety among students. Choosing the right major is the first step for successful future where students could be passionate and hardworking during their existents at university.
Regarding to the important results of this research, there are some limitation need to be considered such as limitation of the sample which was take in some universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Another limitations related to the designing of the questionnaire where researcher tried to summarize the questions as possible as he could to make sure students will not give random answers due to online distribution of questionnaire. In addition, there were three categories of final year students including three faculties: medicine, natural science and social science students. This limited the results to these three categories which may lead to different results regarding different specializations and faculties.
There is need for more studies connecting the experience of fresh graduates on labor market and before their graduation to understand the actual reasons behind the anxiety. Such re-searches will explore the expectations of future job and students' assumptions during last year of university. In addition, more research could be conducted in different countries to explain the variances among students' expectations according to the economic situation of state, culture, level of income and work addiction.
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Information about the author
Abdullah M. Al-Ansi
(Indonesia, Yogyakarta)
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. in Education Management, Faculty of Economic and Management
University of Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1682-3154
