Undergraduate computing students report help-seeking avoidance and anxiety, with 62.5% sometimes avoiding asking for help even when needed and 75% reporting anxiety when not understanding a topic¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2031: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In the pre-experiment questionnaire, the majority of students (62.5%) indicated they sometimes avoided asking for help even when they needed it, and a greater proportion (75%) reported anxiety when they did not understand a topic. → Andy Gray 2026

Evidence¶

Andy Gray 2026¶

Andy Gray, Jake Hobbs. (2026). Reducing Barriers to Academic Support: Evaluating a Course-Specific RAG System for Addressing Help-Seeking Disparities in Higher Education. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21600 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2609.21600

q2 · i? · associational · r1

Pre-experiment questionnaire administered to the fifteen main-study participants before interacting with Beacon, establishing baseline help-seeking behaviours and confidence. The article reports "The majority of students (62.5%) indicated they sometimes avoided asking for help" and 75% reporting anxiety when not understanding a topic; these are descriptive percentages with no effect size printed. The article says all fifteen participants completed the pre-experiment questionnaire, yet neither percentage is a whole number of fifteen (62.5% of 15 is 9.4; 75% is 11.25), so the figures are given as printed and their denominator is unresolved.

"The majority of students (62.5%) indicated they sometimes avoided asking for help even when they needed it, while a greater proportion reported anxiety when they did not understand a topic (75%)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Effective AI help-seeking is itself a skill unevenly distributed among students, and access to an assistant is not equivalent to effective help-seeking — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Drop-in one-to-one tutorial attendees improved P1X-to-P1Y marks while the class average declined — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Most students (87.6%) prefer attempting to solve problems independently before seeking support, managing uncertainty privately before engaging formal support — related
• A warning message about potential AI mistakes increases seventh-graders' hint requests in a math intelligent tutoring system — related
• Not requesting any hints in at least one problem is related to greater wheel-spinning, consistent with help avoidance — related
• Early identification and treatment of math anxiety is important because early anxieties can snowball into avoidance of mathematics — related
• Online students' learning needs centre on course support and communication with tutors and other students — related