Positive Academic Emotions Tied to Stronger Learning Engagement in Nursing Students

Undergraduate nursing students who feel confident, excited, and satisfied with their studies tend to invest more energy in their learning, while those dominated by boredom and frustration disengage, according to a cross-sectional survey of 650 nursing undergraduates at a university in China. The study, published open access in BMC Nursing, examined how academic emotions relate to learning engagement, a widely used indicator of academic success and professional development in nursing education.

The researchers recruited participants through convenience sampling and collected data with three instruments: a demographic questionnaire, the Academic Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ), and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale–Student Version (UWES-S). They analyzed the responses using SPSS 26.0, applying descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression to characterize emotion and engagement levels and to identify factors associated with engagement.

On the emotional side, participants reported higher levels of positive academic emotions than negative ones. Satisfaction was the highest-scoring emotion dimension in the survey, while boredom was the lowest, suggesting that, on average, these students’ day-to-day academic experiences leaned more toward positive than negative feelings about their coursework.

Learning engagement followed a similarly favorable pattern. The nursing students demonstrated a relatively high overall level of engagement, and among the engagement dimensions measured by the UWES-S, dedication received the highest score. Dedication reflects a sense of enthusiasm, inspiration, and significance in one’s studies, and its prominence here indicates that many students felt personally invested in their nursing education rather than merely attending to it.

The survey also revealed that engagement was not uniform across the student body. Significant differences in learning engagement emerged according to place of residence, only-child status, and maternal educational level. These demographic factors, the authors report, were associated with how strongly students engaged with their learning, pointing to family and background characteristics as relevant variables in nursing students’ academic involvement.

The core of the analysis concerned the link between emotions and engagement. Positive academic emotions, including confidence, excitement, and satisfaction, were positively associated with learning engagement, whereas boredom and frustration were negatively associated with it. Confidence stood out among the emotion dimensions, demonstrating the strongest correlation with learning engagement of any emotion measured in the study.

Multiple linear regression analysis sharpened this picture. Positive academic emotions emerged as significant positive predictors of learning engagement, while negative academic emotions acted as negative predictors. In other words, the emotional texture of students’ academic lives statistically accounted for differences in how engaged they were, even after the analysis considered the other variables included in the model.

The findings carry practical weight for nursing educators. Because learning engagement is an important indicator of academic success and professional development, and academic emotions are recognized as key psychological factors influencing students’ learning behaviors and outcomes, the authors conclude that nursing educators should pay greater attention to students’ emotional experiences. They recommend implementing targeted interventions designed to foster positive academic emotions, with the aim of promoting learning engagement and improving educational outcomes in undergraduate nursing programs.

As with any cross-sectional survey, the design captures a single point in time and cannot establish that emotions cause changes in engagement; the associations reported here describe relationships rather than causal effects. The use of convenience sampling at one Chinese university also means the participants may not represent all undergraduate nursing students. Nevertheless, the study adds quantitative evidence that the emotional dimension of nursing education, from confidence and satisfaction to boredom and frustration, moves together with how deeply students engage in their learning, and it identifies confidence as the emotional factor most tightly linked to engagement in this population.

Subject of Research: Academic emotions and learning engagement among undergraduate nursing students

Article Title: Relationship between academic emotions and learning engagement among undergraduate nursing students and its influencing factors

Article References: Guo, L., Yan, D., Zhang, B., Guo, M., Zhang, R., Feng, Y., Jiao, R., & Chai, Z. (2026). Relationship between academic emotions and learning engagement among undergraduate nursing students and its influencing factors. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05552-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05552-5

Keywords: nursing education, academic emotions, learning engagement, cross-sectional study, China, Relationship, between, academic, emotions, learning, engagement, undergraduate