关键词: 高中新生, 入学适应, 焦虑, 心理素质, 潜变量增长模型

Abstract: It is easy for students who are new to a school to have maladaptive problems and induced anxiety due to the change of environment. This is especially true for high school freshmen, because they not only have to adapt to a new school environment but also have to experience dramatic biological and psychological changes in the developmental phase of puberty. That is to say, they have to bear the dual pressure of change in their external environment and turbulence in their internal world at the same time. Moreover, teenagers are in a period of high anxiety, which is not conducive to their physical and mental health development. Previous studies on anxiety in high school freshmen were all cross-sectional investigations and did not investigate the trajectory and characteristics of anxiety. Therefore, this study used a short-term longitudinal research design across four waves to explore the trajectory of anxiety in high school freshmen as well as the mechanism of psychological suzhi. In this study, 326 registered freshmen from a high school in Chengdu were selected as the research participants using cluster sampling. The first baseline test was completed in the first week after entering school as freshmen. The questionnaires were the Psychological Suzhi Questionnaire for Adolescents and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale. A total of 306 valid questionnaires were collected (the effective response rate was 93.9%), and included 165 male students (53.9%) and 141 female students (46.1%), with an average age of 15.5 years (SD=0.47). The second test was conducted four weeks later, and the third test four weeks after the second. The fourth test was postponed to eight weeks after the third test due to a conflict in the course arrangement schedule. The second, third, and fourth tests were conducted with the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale. The sample sizes were 22, 75, and 67, respectively, due to attrition for various reasons, such as absence or change of school. The latent growth model was used to explore the trajectories and influencing factors of anxiety in high school freshmen during the transition period. The results showed that: (1) anxiety in high school freshmen increased linearly in the first semester; (2) there were no significant gender differences in the initial levels of anxiety, however, male students’ anxiety increased significantly faster than female students’ anxiety in the following four months; and (3) the psychological suzhi of freshmen had a significant predictive effect on the intercept and slope of anxiety, that is to say, freshmen with higher levels of psychological suzhi had relatively low initial levels of anxiety after entrance, and their anxiety had a slower growth rate during the following three months. The above results demonstrated that anxiety in high school freshmen increased linearly, and psychological suzhi had predictive effects on freshmen’s anxiety in this process. Analyzing the test results, this study examined the trajectory and characteristics of anxiety in high school freshmen, and the role of gender and psychological suzhi in its trajectory. The results confirmed that psychological suzhi can effectively prevent and reduce the deterioration of their emotional state. The study deepens the understanding of the mechanism of psychological suzhi in adolescents’ mental health education and provides a targeted empirical basis for the prevention and education of anxiety in the adaptation period for high school freshmen.

Key words: High school freshmen, Enrollment adaptation, Anxiety, Psychological Suzhi, Latent Growth Model