| Mental health is one of health problems that affect university students' learning and living. As to the relation between the mental health and the academic performance, studies have shown that mental health is the sum of many important factors affecting the academic achievement in the students. Despite the general idea of the relation between these two aspects, unanimous results cannot be reached when coming to more specific levels. One reason lies in the application of methods. The appropriate statistical methods conduce to searching for the corresponding influential factors correctly and better understanding of the acting mechanism of the factors on the academic performance. However, the inappropriate methods not only cause the confusion among the scholars but also obscure the substantial acting mechanism of the factors. In this article we explore the possible acting mechanism of mental health factors on the academic performance and search for more reliable indexes to assess the academic aptitude in medical students by employing various statistical methods. And we hope it would provide some useful information on the methodology in the similar research. 1 Research designAll the college students pursuing bachelor's degree enrolled in Fujian Medical University in 2000 were asked to participate in the study and complete Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), General Self-efficacy Scale (OSES) , Adults Nowichi-Strickland Internal-External Control Scale (ANSIE), and The Self-Esteem Scale (SES). The above six scales were used to assess die students' personality (Extroversion, Neuroticism and Psychoticism), symptoms of depression (sds), symptoms of anxiety (sas), sense of self-efficacy (efficacy), attribution style (control) and status of self-esteem (esteem). Another three items concerned with the gender of investigated individual (sex), the average study time in the semester (tl) and the average study time during two weeks before final examination (t2) were added to the scale. The final test score of mathematics (math), physics (physics), chemistry (chem), and cytology (cyto) was used to evaluate the students' academic performance.We analyzed the data by applying Analysis of Variance (AV), Multiple Stepwise Regression Analysis (MSRA), Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and so on. Additionally, new developing statistical method, Linear Structural Relations (L1SREL), was employed to throw light on the substantial acting mechanism.2 Pretreatment of the data (Factor analysis, FA)One factor and five factors were extracted respectively from four subjects and ten candidate influential variables excluding sex. The former was named as score factor and the later were named as emotion factor, diligence factor, cognition factor, indifference factor and extroversion factor respectively. The results showed that there was one latent factor behind four subjects and the candidate influential variables excluding sex could be divided into five aspects.3 Interaction effect of sex and personality typeWe tested the interaction eifect of sex and personality type in the students, the single subject score and themean score as dependent variable respectively. The F values of the interaction effect of sex and personalitytype on mathematics, physics, chemistry, and cytology were 1.31, 1.49, 0.66 and 0.95 (P>0.05). The F valueof the interaction effect on the mean score was 0.19, P>0.05.The result showed that there didn't exit the interaction effect of sex and personality type on the academicperformance.4 Effects of the mental health on the academic performance 4.1 Multiple step-wise regression analysis (MSRA)4.1.1 Effects of variables on the score of single subjectWe used MSRA to search for the determinants of the score of mathematics. The determinants were study time in the semester (Beta=0.27), extroversion (Beta=-0.23), and sex (Beta=0.21). The coefficient of determination was 19.1%. The variables predicting the score of phys...
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