The Mediating Role of Mindfulness in the Relationship between Psychological Resilience and Test Anxiety in Adolescents

Introduction: The examination of variables such as resilience and mindfulness, which may help adolescents who are enrolled in distance education cope with test anxiety, is important in terms of reducing test anxiety and increasing the efficiency of distance education. For this reason, it was aimed to examine the mediating role of mindfulness in the relationship between students’ psychological resilience and test anxiety. Methods: The study group included 840 high school students. Baron and Kenny’s causal steps approach was applied to investigate the mediating effect of conscious awareness on the relationship between psychological resilience and test anxiety. In addition, the bootstrapping method proposed by Hayes was used to determine the significance of the mediating effect of conscious awareness. Results: It was observed that there was a negative relationship between psychological resilience scores and test anxiety scores, a positive relationship between resilience and mindfulness scores, and a negative relationship between test anxiety scores and mindfulness scores. While psychological resilience had a negative effect on test anxiety, the indirect effect of psychological resilience on test anxiety was also found to be significant. Mindfulness provided partial mediation of the effect of resilience on test anxiety. Discussion: High levels of awareness and psychological resilience enable students to experience less stress. Conscious awareness, like psychological resilience, is therefore viewed as an important resource that enables a person to manage stressful situations, and it is believed to be effective in reducing one’s anxiety. Limitations: This study was limited to students enrolled in Anatolian high schools in Turkey who could be reached via convenience sampling, whose parents consented to their participation, and who were enrolled in distance education in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, a major limitation of the study is that data were only collected from students of Anatolian high schools, and the majority of the participating students were in their first or second years of high school. Conclusions: There is no prior direct research examining the mediating role of conscious awareness in the relationship between psychological resilience and test anxiety among high school students in the literature. In this regard, it is anticipated that this study will contribute to the literature. Within the scope of preventive guidance, educational guidance, and psychological counseling services, face-to-face and online psychoeducation programs based on conscious awareness can be designed by school psychological counselors to enhance psychological resilience, reduce students’ test anxiety, and support adolescents in coping with intensely stressful situations such as pandemics.