Importance of social support and engagement to well-being in college students during the pandemic — ASN Events
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  3. Importance of social support and engagement to well-being in college students during the pandemic

Importance of social support and engagement to well-being in college students during the pandemic (#826)

Jamie McCreary 1 , Harold Stanislaw 1 , Isabella Romeo 2 , Marcus Hawley 3
  1. California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA, United States
  2. Public Health and Biology, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
  3. Materials Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA

Background

Since the pandemic began, more than half of college students in the United States have experienced anxiety and more than two thirds have reported depression (Chang et al., 2021). Social support is an important protective factors against these significant challenges to well-being (Bukhari & Afzal, 2017).

Aims

We will present data gathered during the second year of the pandemic that examines the influence of social support availability and social engagement on well-being in college students.

Method

Surveys were completed by students attending a primarily residential public university in California (n = 220), students at a public university in California attended primarily by commuters (n = 73), and students throughout the United States recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 75). All respondents were 18-30 years old. Well-being was assessed with a modified version of the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (Stewart-Brown et al., 2009), and a well-being instrument developed by Seity Health LLC (2022). Respondents were also asked about their living arrangement, the frequency of their social interactions, their satisfaction with those interactions, and the level of instrumental and emotional support provided by their social network.

Results

Both assessments confirmed that many college students struggle with well-being. Well-being was unrelated to students’ living arrangements or the frequency of their interactions with others. However, well-being was higher in students who were satisfied with their social interactions, and who reported a strong sense of belonging. Emotional support was predictive of well-being; instrumental support was not.

Conclusion

Social interactions are critical to the well-being of college students, but the quality of these interactions is much more important than their quantity. Thus, simply ensuring that students have roommates is no guarantee that they will receive the social and emotional supports needed to thrive in college. Instead, institutions need to track the well-being of the students they serve and be intentional in helping them develop meaningful social networks and a strong sense of belonging.

  1. Bukhari, S. R., & Afzal, F. (2017). Perceived social support predicts psychological problems among university students. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 4(2), 2349-3429. https://doi.org/10.25215/0402.082
  2. Chang, J. J., Ji, Y., Li, Y. H., Pan, H. F., & Su, P. Y. (2021). Prevalence of anxiety symptom and depressive symptom among college students during COVID-19 pandemic: A meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 292, 242-254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.05.109
  3. Seity Health LLC. (2022). Where you go to grow. https:// seityhealthinfo.com/
  4. Stewart-Brown, S., Tennant, A., Tennant, R., Platt, S., Parkinson, J., & Weich, S. (2009). Internal construct validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale (WEMWBS): A Rasch analysis using data from the Scottish health education population survey. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 7(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15
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