Associations between undergraduates’ interpersonal relationships and mental health in perspective of social network analysis

Abstract

More and more studies found that mental health was closely related to interpersonal relationships. But it is a recent topic that utilizing social network analysis (SNA) to qualify individuals’ interpersonal relationships. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationships between undergraduates’ class interpersonal relationships and mental health from a perspective of social network analysis. 481 participants (165 males, 316 females) from the first, second and third year of bachelor’s degree completed the Mental Health Scale for College Students (MHS-CS) and the Social Network Questionnaire (SNQ). Data was analyzed in UCINET 6, Mplus 8.0 and IBM SPSS 25.0. The results of latent profile analysis (LPA) showed that undergraduates’ class interpersonal relationships can be classified into three types, which are the common type, the passive type and the active type. And the results of one-way ANOVA showed that the common group had the highest level of mental health than the other two groups (p = 0.001). In conclusion, SNA provides a new way to qualify undergraduates’ class interpersonal relationships. And the findings of the current study suggests that in the class interpersonal communications of undergraduates, only moderate activity and popularity were positively associated with mental health.