Examining Relationships among Contextual, Motivational and Wellbeing Variables of Immigrant Language-Minority College Students

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The number of immigrant undergraduate students with diverse ethnicities and native languages has been continuously increasing. As a result, Immigrant Language-Minority (ILM) college student wellbeing and retention is the focus of many higher education institutions. The purpose of the present exploratory study was to examine relationships among personal (e.g., self-efficacy for learning, self-regulation), contextual (e.g., stereotype threat, sense of belonging), and wellbeing (e.g., negative affect, positive affect, academic satisfaction and life satisfaction) variables with 502 ILM undergraduate students. Grounded in the social-cognitive perspective, a model was proposed where contextual variables influence personal beliefs and in turn student wellbeing perceptions. Using structural equation modeling, data showed that sense of belonging directly predicted student self-regulation, self-efficacy, positive affect, negative affect, and academic and life satisfaction, whereas stereotype threat directly predicted self-efficacy and negative affect. Moreover, findings also showed that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between sense of belonging, stereotype threat, and academic satisfaction. Overall, the proposed model predicted 54% of variance in life satisfaction. Implications for ILM undergraduate student wellbeing and retention are discussed.