Uncovering the mechanism linking education expectation and suicide ideation among students in tertiary education: The mediating role of academic burnout, psychache, and hopelessness

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337831 December 18, 2025 10 / 16 Cultural variations in pathways To examine cultural differences, an analysis using critical ratios for differences in the pathways comparing Group 1 (Malaysia), Group 2 (Singapore), and Group 3 (Australia) was conducted on AMOS 28 (see supplemental materials). For models with expectations from self, there were no significant differences in all pathways across groups. For models with expectations from parents, only the a2_path (Expectation from Parents à Psychache) was significantly different across groups (z-score above ±1.96). In particular, the differences were significant between the Malaysian and Singaporean models (z-score = −2.474) and between the Malaysian and Australian models (z-score = −2.318). No differences in the a2_path were found between the Singaporean and Australian models (z-score = .327). For models with expectations from educators, no significant differences were found in the pathways across groups. Similarly, for models with expectations from culture, no significant differences were found in the pathways across groups. Discussion Preliminary analysis Preliminary findings revealed an overall significant difference in mean scores for the Malaysian sample on all four sources of expectations, which were higher than the Singapore and Australia samples. Differences between the Singaporean and Australian samples were not found for expectations from self, parents, and educators. Expectation from culture was sig-

nificantly different between all groups, with Malaysia having the highest mean score, followed by Singapore and Australia with the lowest score. The result supports the argument that Eastern Confucian cultures (e.g., Malaysia and Singapore) Fig 5. Educator/Institutional expectation models. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337831.g005