The predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing: psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement
- 1School of Educational Sciences, Shangluo University , ,
- 2Department of Mental Health, Shangluo Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital , ,
Abstract
Objective: To examine the predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing in survey data and to investigate the serial indirect association under a prespecified ordering involving psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement.
Methods: A fixed random seed was used to split 815 complete survey questionnaire records into an EFA group (n = 408) and a CFA group (n = 407), on which principal axis factoring and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, respectively. After the measurement structure was confirmed, recursive equations and bootstrap intervals were estimated using the full sample.
Results: The background distributions were similar across the two groups. The EFA retained five factors, and the five-factor CFA model showed good fit, χ2(485) = 529.551, CFI = 0.994, and RMSEA = 0.015. The total association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing was 0.435, and the full serial indirect association was 0.036. Among six competing orders estimated under identical constraints, the theoretically specified order showed the best relative fit, although its absolute fit remained inadequate.
Conclusions: The five variables were interrelated yet distinguishable in the survey data. The proposed ordering may serve as a theoretical model for testing in future studies using authentic samples; the cross-sectional survey findings cannot establish a causal ordering.
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BibTeX
@article{jin2026predictive,
title = {{The predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing: psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement}},
author = {Min Jin and Qi Wang},
journal = {Frontiers in psychology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1983869},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13727545},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing: psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement
AU - Min Jin
AU - Qi Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
JO - Frontiers in psychology
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1983869
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13727545
AB - Objective: To examine the predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing in survey data and to investigate the serial indirect association under a prespecified ordering involving psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement. Methods: A fixed random seed was used to split 815 complete survey questionnaire records into an EFA group (n = 408) and a CFA group (n = 407), on which principal axis factoring and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, respectively. After the measurement structure was confirmed, recursive equations and bootstrap intervals were estimated using the full sample. Results: The background distributions were similar across the two groups. The EFA retained five factors, and the five-factor CFA model showed good fit, χ2(485) = 529.551, CFI = 0.994, and RMSEA = 0.015. The total association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing was 0.435, and the full serial indirect association was 0.036. Among six competing orders estimated under identical constraints, the theoretically specified order showed the best relative fit, although its absolute fit remained inadequate. Conclusions: The five variables were interrelated yet distinguishable in the survey data. The proposed ordering may serve as a theoretical model for testing in future studies using authentic samples; the cross-sectional survey findings cannot establish a causal ordering.
SN - 1664-1078
ER -