Depression, Eating Behavior, and Students’ Learning Outcomes in Higher Education: Nigerian Universities in Perspective

The learning outcomes of students in higher education has reached an abominable state that has attracted the interest of educational stakeholders and academics. The association between depression and the academic performance of students in different subjects has been widely studied. It is known from previous studies that depression leads to poor performance among students. It is yet to be known whether eating behavior moderates the relationship between depression and students’ learning in higher education. The study adopted the factorial research design using continuous data collected from a sample of 232 final year students, 83 males (35.7%) and 149 females (64.3%). Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), and Students GPA scores were all used as data collection instruments. Structural Equation Modeling and Regression analyses were used to answer the research questions. Findings showed, amongst others, that eating behavior moderated the relationship between depression and students’ learning outcomes (R = 0.707), explaining 50 percent of the total variance in students’ learning outcomes. Students’ eating behavior brought a 0.022 change to the R squared value of depression, with an F change value of 10.106 which is statistically significant (p < 0.05) at 1 and 229 degrees of freedom. Conclusively, depression and eating behavior play a central role in deciding the learning outcomes of students in higher education. Depression has a negative effect while eating behavior has a positive effect on students’ learning outcomes. In the presence of depression, eating behavior could be used to promote positive learning outcomes in students as a moderator variable due to its positive effect.