A within-person perspective for investigating transitional students’ academic learning and adjustment during the first university semester

Achieving academic adjustment is challenging in transition to university. Hence, guided by the Study Demands-Resources Theory (SD-R) and its dual processes (i.e. motivational and health impairment processes), we investigated reciprocal relationships between some key learning experiences (i.e. academic self-efficacy, academic engagement, and learning-related emotional exhaustion) and how they can interplay with academic adjustment. To this end, the three-wave data spanning over the first semester were collected from Chinese transitional students (Mage = 18.26, SD = 0.73). Further, we conducted the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) that can disentangle between – and within-person variances and reveal state-like within-person relationships. The RI-CLPM analyses showed that random intercepts of the constructs under investigation were correlated with each other at the between-person level. At the within-person level, regarding the motivational process, we revealed the positive reciprocal relationships between academic self-efficacy and engagement and the positive unidirectional relationships from prior academic self-efficacy to later adjustment across Time 1 and Time 3. Regarding the health impairment process, we found negative unidirectional relationships from prior emotional exhaustion to later adjustment across Time 1 and Time 3. The positive unidirectional relationship from prior academic self-efficacy to later adjustment was additionally found from Time 2 to Time 3, but this relationship was not evidenced from Time 1 to Time 2.