Background
Purpose:
The transition to college is a momentous life event with important implications for wellbeing. While it is clear that social support systems and self-efficacy both facilitate healthy adjustment and wellbeing during this transition, far less is known about the role of faculty support in helping students to manage this transition and cope with the stressors of university life.
A better understanding of these links has clear implications for intervention, and this is the primary aim of The Belonging Project.
By understanding the role of faculty in student self-efficacy and wellbeing, we might develop more effective programs to enhance positive student outcomes.
Quick Snapshot
Variables: Sense of Belonging (DV), Faculty Support, Peer Support, Academic Self-Efficacy, Subjective Happiness, Resilience, & Stress
Hypotheses:
Does faculty support correlate with student wellbeing and self-efficacy, independent of peer support and stress?
Does self-efficacy mediate the relation of faculty support to student wellbeing?
Does faculty support buffer the relation of stress to student wellbeing?
Measures:
Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999)
Perceived Faculty Support & Perceived Peer Support subscales from the Revised Sense of Belonging Scale (Hoffman et al., 2002)
Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (Gaumer-Erickson et al., 2016)
12-Item Grit Scale (Duckworth, 2007)
Resilience Scale (Wagnild & Young, 1987)
Modified Stressor Scale for College Students (Ota et al., 2016)
Abstract
THE ROLE OF FACULTY IN FOSTERING PSYCHOSOCIAL WELLBEING
AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
The transition to college represents a major life event, and successfully navigating this shift has implications for students’ psychosocial wellbeing. While there is ample support for the idea that social relationships can facilitate student wellbeing during the transition to college, there is limited understanding of the unique role faculty may play in supporting students. The aim of this study was to determine the relation of faculty support to student wellbeing and self-efficacy, independent of peer support and student level of stress. Additionally, the primary questions were to examine whether self-efficacy mediated the relation of faculty support to student wellbeing, and whether faculty support buffered the impact of stress to student wellbeing. Participants included 147 undergraduate students (Mage= 23.14, 69.4% female) from a Midwestern university, who completed a series of surveys assessing their levels of support in belonging on campus, their subjective happiness, self-efficacy, resilience, grit, and stress. Faculty support showed a robust correlation with a composite measure of psychosocial wellbeing incorporating happiness, resilience and grit. Importantly, this relation was independent of peer support and student level of self-perceived stress, p < .001, R2 = .170. Additionally, there was support for a mediated relationship from faculty support to student wellbeing via self-efficacy, p < .001. While student stress and faculty support were independently associated with student wellbeing, there was no evidence for an interaction between the two. That is, faculty support was equivalently associated with student wellbeing regardless of how much stress students felt they were experiencing. These results highlight the independent critical role of faculty in supporting student wellbeing during this major life transition. Interventions to promote faculty support may serve as a promising means of facilitating student adjustment on their university campuses.
Keywords: psychosocial wellbeing, faculty support, self-efficacy, college transition, student retention
Outcomes
Primary Findings:
Increased faculty support, increased peer support, and lower levels of stress are significantly associated with higher levels of psychosocial wellbeing in university students (RQ1)
Results suggest that faculty support has a significant positive impact on student psychosocial wellbeing, even after controlling for the support a student receives from their peers (RQ1)
When academic self-efficacy was added to the model, the direct path from faculty support to wellbeing disappeared; this indicates that and increase in faculty support may be able to positively impact a students' self-efficacy as one of the mechanisms for increasing their overall psychosocial wellbeing (RQ2)
No interaction was found between faculty support and stress, which suggests that increased faculty support does not act as a protective factor for students' level of stress
Selected Figures:
Figure 5.
Structure Equation Model Showing Peer Support, Faculty Support (Fully Mediated by Self-Efficacy) and Stress Predicting Wellbeing
Note. N = 155; ** p <.01; *** p <.001.
This structural equation model predicts university students’ psychosocial wellbeing from levels of stress, peer support, and faculty support with self-efficacy as a mediator. Dotted lines indicate nonsignificant paths while solid lines indicate significant paths. Statistics are standardized regression coefficients; e1 through e5 indicate standard error; double-arrowed lines indicate correlation of standard errors.
Figure 6.
Analysis of the Potential Interaction of Level of Stress on Student Wellbeing, Filtered by Level of Faculty Support
Note. N = 155, interaction p > .05. The continuous variable faculty support was dummy-coded for illustrative purposes based on visual inspection of the distribution, where 0 = low levels of faculty support, 1 = moderate levels of faculty support, & 2 = high levels of faculty support. Faculty support, stress, and the interaction of faculty support and stress were mean-centered.
Research Design & Statistical Analyses
Software: Analyses were conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 26 software, and in Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS), Version 25 software (IBM Corporation, 2019)
Power Analysis: A priori power analysis determined using G-Power (alpha set at .05, desired power of 90%) = 134 participants required to detect a moderate effect size (r = .3) with sufficiently acceptable statistical power; study N = 153
Statistical Methods: Descriptive statistics; tests of normality including Kolmogorov-Smirnov test; Pearson's Product-Moment Correlations; exploratory principle components analysis with varimax rotation for factor analysis; simple linear regression analyses to test for both direct and indirect effects; hierarchical multiple regression analyses to test for potential mediators to the direct path; diagramming of structural equation modeling
Model Fit: χ2 = 18.692, df = 2, p = < .001; RMSEA = .223; NFI = .920; CFI = .924; IFI = .928.
There is evidence in the literature to suggest that both the chi-square and RMSEA measures are highly influenced by both sample size and degrees of freedom, which makes them susceptible to Type II error (Byrne, 1994). Therefore, due to the lower degrees of freedom (df = 2) and smaller sample size (N = 158), the significant chi-square and the above-threshold RMSEA are deemed acceptable, especially in light of other indices indicating good model fit.
For More Detailed Results:
Please see chapter 4 of my master's thesis, The Role of Faculty in Fostering Psychosocial Wellbeing Among University Students, beginning on page 26.
Figure 5 can be found on page 62.
Figure 6 can be found on page 63.
Media
Please click any of the following thumbnails to view the document as a .pdf.
MANUSCRIPT (Currently under review for publication)
Wick, K.M., Bovaird, J.A., Carney, C., Miramonti, A.A., Stevenson, T., & Clark, C.A.C. (TBD). The persistence of faculty mentorship as a robust correlate of positive outcomes in university students. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/M3RPV
OSF Preregistration: https://osf.io/m3rpv/
MASTER'S THESIS (2021)
Wick, K.M. (2021). The role of faculty in fostering psychosocial wellbeing among university students [Master's Thesis]. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cehsdiss/387/
2020_SRA.pdfPOSTER (2020)
Wick, K.M., Ramm, E., Stevenson, T., Kesselring, S., Swanson, L., Swearer, S., & Clark, C. (2020). The role of faculty in students’ wellbeing in higher education. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Chicago, IL.
B_WPA2019.pdfPOSTER (2020)
Wick, K. M., Stevenson, T.L., Ramm, E., Meyers, L. S., Swearer, S., & Clark, C. (2020). Fostering connection: Predicting sense of belonging on college campuses. Poster presented at the Bi-Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, San Diego, CA.
2020_ABT.pdfPOSTER (2019)
Wick, K. M., Stevenson, T.L., Ramm, E., & Meyers, L. S. (2019). Building connection: Predicting sense of belonging from resilience with self-efficacy and subjective happiness as mediators. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Pasadena, CA.