Family Functioning and Academic Self-Efficacy: The Mediating Effect of Emotion Regulation

Family functioning can have an impact on the processes of emotion regulation, which in turn impact students' perception and judgment of their own skills. In order to analyze this, the mediating effect of emotion regulation strategies on the relation between family functioning and academic self-efficacy in Mexican students was examined for the first time. This research had a quantitative and cross-sectional correlational design, and it included 729 Mexican high-school teenagers. Results showed that the model had an adequate fit, confirming that family cohesion, flexibility, and communication have an indirect impact on academic self-efficacy -composed of participants' academic confidence, effort, and understanding, through emotion regulation, namely through reappraisal and mindfulness strategies. Thus, it was possible to acquire a more accurate understanding of how emotion control impacts the processes involved in academic self-efficacy. The results suggest that those students who, concerning their daily activities, can be aware of internal processes and external aspects surrounding them, and who are also capable of changing the meaning of an emotional experience, will be able to reappraise their school activities according to their own goals, reappraise situations involving a problem they feel they cannot solve in the best way, or reappraise the feelings they experience when performing academic activities. In conclusion, the pioneering nature of this research confirmed that emotion regulation strategies mediated the relation between family functioning and academic self-efficacy, by helping to explain the association between emotion regulation strategies and the perception of Mexican teenage students of their confidence in the development of their academic activities, the effort they make to accomplish them, and their understanding of those activities.