Perceived Academic Stress Predicts State Anxiety via Self‐Compassion in High‐Achieving Junior School Students: A Daily Diary Study

BACKGROUND: Previous research has demonstrated the association between perceived academic stress and anxiety. However, the relationship and mechanism between daily self-compassion and daily state anxiety in adolescents, especially high-achieving students, remains unclear. METHODS: This study employed a 21-day daily diary design and multilevel modeling to explore whether and how daily perceived academic stress is associated with daily state anxiety. Data were collected from 2025. A total of 106 high-achieving ninth-grade students whose academic achievement ranked in the top 8.68% (59 males, 47 females; ages 14-17 years, M = 15.02, SD = 0.59) completed daily measures of perceived academic stress, self-compassion, and state anxiety across 21 consecutive days. RESULTS: Multilevel regression analysis showed that daily perceived academic stress significantly positively predicted daily state anxiety (b = 0.68, p < 0.001). Furthermore, the 1-1-1 multilevel mediation analysis indicated that daily self-compassion mediated the relationship between daily perceived academic stress and daily state anxiety (within-level: b = 0.05, 95% CI = [0.036, 0.074], between-level: b = 0.31, 95% CI = [0.118, 0.528]). CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing self-compassion, such as Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), may help reduce state anxiety in adolescents.