Predicting Academic Threat Appraisal: The Impact of Stress, Resilience, and Grit on First-Semester Nursing Students

BACKGROUND Prelicensure nursing students face significant stress and retention challenges. Understanding how students perceive their resources versus demands, academic resilience, grit, and stress may improve their persistence and success in nursing programs. AIM Explore the prevalence of and relationships among academic resilience, grit, perceived stress, and threat appraisal in first-semester students. METHOD This study utilized a cross-sectional, observational research design in a sample of 68 nursing students enrolled in three large undergraduate universities in the southwestern United States. RESULTS Average perceived stress stores were higher than the normed average. There was a significant correlation between academic resilience and both stress ( p <.001) and grit ( p <.001). After controlling for resilience and grit, higher stress significantly increased the likelihood of a threat state. CONCLUSION Strategies to reduce stress and boost academic resilience may enhance nursing students’ performance by using the academic threat appraisal scale to identify and support struggling students.