Do Programmes of Study Matter? Examining Academic Resilience and Students' Academic Engagement in Second Cycle Institutions

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of academic resilience on students' engagement in second-cycle institutions and examined whether this relationship varies across different study programmes. Employing a descriptive research design, 301 students were sampled from a population of 1,496 using Slovin's formula. Stratified and simple random sampling were used to sample participants. Data was analysed using PLS-SEM with 5,000 bootstrap samples and the Kruskal-Wallis H-Test. The analysis revealed that all dimensions of academic resilience: perseverance, reflective and adaptive help-seeking (RAHS), and negative emotional response regulation (NERS), significantly predicted all three dimensions of academic engagement. Programme-specific findings indicated that General Science students demonstrated the highest levels of resilience and engagement, followed by students in Home Economics and Business, while Visual Arts students scored the lowest. Despite these programme-based differences in levels of resilience and engagement, the moderation analysis showed that the relationship between resilience and engagement remained consistent across all programmes. This suggests that while students may vary in resilience and engagement based in their field of study, the positive impact of resilience on engagement is universal. The findings highlight the importance of integrating Perseverance, RAHS and NERS-focused strategies into the second-cycle curricula to enhance engagement across all academic disciplines.