Interpersonal distress mediates and self-efficacy moderates the association between family functioning and anxiety in college students in China

Abstract Family functioning has been consistently associated with anxiety symptoms in college students, yet the underlying associations remain incompletely understood. This cross-sectional study examined whether interpersonal distress mediates the association between family functioning and anxiety, and whether self-efficacy moderates this indirect association. A convenience sample of 1,120 Chinese college students (82.1% female; mean age = 20.30 years) completed self-report measures of family functioning, interpersonal distress, self-efficacy, and anxiety. A latent moderated structural equations (LMS) approach was employed in Mplus 8.3 to estimate the latent interaction between family functioning and self-efficacy while accounting for measurement error, with gender and family economic status included as covariates. Results indicated that poorer family functioning was associated with higher interpersonal distress and anxiety, although the direct association with anxiety was not robust to controlling for common method variance. Interpersonal distress partially accounted for the family functioning–anxiety association (unstandardized conditional indirect association at the mean level of self-efficacy = -0.114, 95% CI [-0.160, -0.068]). Self-efficacy moderated the first-stage association between family functioning and interpersonal distress, with the association weakening as self-efficacy increased (unstandardized simple slopes = − 0.255, − 0.164, and − 0.074 at low, mean, and high self-efficacy, respectively; the slope at high self-efficacy was not significant); however, the direct family functioning–anxiety association was not significantly moderated ( β = 0.042, p = 0.113). These findings highlight interpersonal distress as a key correlate and self-efficacy as a moderating factor, with potential implications for mental health services in university settings.