UNDERGRADUATES' ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT: THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF ACADEMIC STRESS, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND RESILIENCE

This study investigated the predictive power of academic stress, emotional intelligence, and resilience on undergraduates' academic engagement. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and a multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 420 respondents, of which 398 (94.8%) were retrieved. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, and multiple regression analysis at the 0.05 significance level. The findings of this study revealed that 45.1% of the total variance in the undergraduates' academic engagement is accounted for by academic stress, emotional intelligence, and resilience. Furthermore, there were significant and positive relationships between academic engagement, emotional intelligence, and resilience. However, a significant but negative relationship existed between academic stress and engagement. The study concluded that institutional policies and structures should be designed to cushion the negative effect of stress on learning. Therefore, it was recommended that emotional intelligence and resilience studies be incorporated into the school curriculum.