A multi-facated study of the relationships between learning approaches, cognitive test anxiety, and perception of social support: A research in university students

The concept of learning has existed with humans and will continue to exist thereafter. Because the development of human beings, civilizations and cultures has always been the result of learning. The human begins learning in infancy, continues with school life, continues with university and work life without stopping in all of these processes, learning continues actively until the concept of death is realized. Learning is an active process that takes place at every stage of life. There are types of learning in educational and educational settings as well as while people continue to learn by themselves and their social environment. In the Twenty-First Century, technological and scientific life increasingly pushes people towards the concept of learning and makes it imperative to learn more about human nature every day. The fact that education is such a priority makes it necessary for educators to have more equipment in this regard. Especially if we consider that the greatest effort to improve the quality of life of people and therefore society and the country goes through education, we need to focus more on the importance we give to human education from our point of view to the student. The Republic of Turkey is a developing country and has a young population. The development of the country and its attainment of prosperity are parallel to the success displayed by the young population in education and the perception of social support that young people receive from society, family, peers and educators. Social support provides a sociality in which the individual does not feel alone and believes that he or she is a member of the community and that the self-interest can be felt. Test anxiety is one of the most important factors affecting the learning process. Each student has different levels of test anxiety. If students test anxiety is controlled and turned to an advantage with the help of social support, the level of learning increases, but in societies where social support is low or never, anxiety takes control of the individual and lowers the level of learning therefore, the level of academic achievement is also negatively affected. The first objective of this study is to test the relationships between learning approaches, cognitive test anxiety and perceived social support variables. In addition, the study determines students differences in learning approaches, social support perceptions and cognitive test anxiety levels according to gender, age, department, grade, income level and grade point average (academic achievement) variables. A total of 217 students from Fırat University's IIBF Department of Business Administration and Political Science and Public Administration and volunteering participated in the study. As a result of the study, relationships between research variables were determined. In addition, it was determined that the total values of social support differed by gender with the revised two-factor study process. As of GNO (gpa); cognitive test anxiety was found to differ in the total values. Finally, the resived two-factor study process factor (surface learning) is based on both grade and income; The revised cognitive test anxiety factor (failure-driven cognitive test anxiety) was found to differ according to income and social support factor (significant other) to grade. Keywords: Learning, learning approaches, perceived social support, cognitive test anxiety, University students