Ansiedade, autoeficácia e motivação nos cursos stricto sensu de ciências contábeis

Abstract

For Platão all men turn to know, not being their desire to live in deception, so education has a permanent character and to educate implies a constant search for oneself. Among the educational modalities, the stricto sensu graduate plays a notorious role, since it is in him that the formation of teachers for higher education and of researchers for the scientific field occurs. The characteristics of this educational modality create a different interaction between the process of teaching learning and the student. Thus, the stricto sensu post-graduation demands, throughout the course, an intense intellectual work and this environment favors the appearance of anxiety. Anxiety is a natural state of the human being, and acts positively on the individual when it contributes by limiting the focus on attention to the developing task. However, it also acts negatively when it is so intense that it generates fears and exaggerated apprehensions of the reality that interfere in the development causing distractions, disorientations, difficulty of concentration, among other symptoms that impair the performance. In this sense, there has been, in recent years, a significant increase in the preoccupation with the mental health of postgraduate students. For this reason, several studies have been trying to understand this phenomenon. Thus, considering the repercussion that anxiety causes in the academic environment, the present research sought to study the phenomenon of anxiety, in order to analyze the relationship between anxiety and self-efficacy and the motivation of students stricto sensu of Accounting Sciences of Brazilian institutions. Through a survey of 322 students from all 33 stricto sensu accounting programs, which were obtained using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to determine the level of anxiety, the Perceived General Self-Efficacy Scale to raise the level of self-efficacy and Echelle Motivation en Education to determine the level of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation, it was found that 12.7% of the students presented high anxiety. In addition, female students were statistically more anxious than male learners. Regarding the self-efficacy scale, it was found that the perception of self-efficacy was positive and significantly related to the obtained score, a result that reveals that the predictive role of self-efficacy beliefs is valid for stricto sensu postgraduate studies. In turn, the result of the academic motivational scale reported that intrinsic motivation was invariant in relation to gender and that male students have lower scores of extrinsic motivation and demotivation compared to female students. The intrinsic motivation for accomplishment was the motivational dimension that most influenced positively the obtained score and the amotivation the dimension that more negatively influences this variable. Regarding the primary objective of the study, it was concluded that anxiety is negatively correlated with self-efficacy. On the other hand, the relation of anxiety to the dimensions of motivation has shown that more self-determined forms of motivation decrease anxiety while the less self-determined forms of motivation result in nonadaptive consequences that positively influence anxiety. In addition, it was also concluded that the variables: age under 24 years, type of postgraduation and receiving psychiatric / psychological support or academic scholarship positively influence anxiety.