Stress and Academic Performance: The Mediating Role of Psychological Capital in Peruvian University Students

The scientific literature has demonstrated the importance of psychological capital as a psychosocial resource that allows attenuating the impact of stress on academic indi-cators. In Peru, there are no known studies that evaluate the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between stress and academic performance of university students. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between stress and academic performance in a sample of 678 male and female students from a private university in Metropolitan Lima. For this purpose, a cross-sectional study was carried out, with a quantitative approach and a non-experimental design. The SISCO-21 Inventory of academic stress and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire-12 were used as application instruments. The results of the mediation analysis show that psychological capital mediates the relationship between stressors, symptoms, coping with stress and academic performance, since the percentage of mediation for stressors is 85.2%; for symptoms 96.87% and for coping strategies 60%. In conclusion, stress has an indirect effect on academic performance, through psychological capital, and the degree to which psychological capital affects the relationship between stress and academic performance is different under the influence of the dimensions of stress.