Variables Related to Academic Help‐Seeking Behaviour in Higher Education – Findings from a Multidisciplinary Perspective

Abstract

Universities admit increasingly diverse student cohorts with varying academic entry standards. To address students’ varying academic prerequisites, academic support services ‒ such as literacy and numeracy support ‒ are offered to ensure student success. However, students often do not engage. Aimed at mapping variables related to a student’s decision to seek academic help in order to identify gaps, this systematic scoping review informs future research and supports the provision of academic support services for diverse student cohorts. As recent research does not provide sufficient evidence, the areas of psychological, physiological and help‐seeking in career counselling were included. Informed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), database and reference list searches were conducted for age, gender, nationality and cultural background, acculturation, stigma, socioeconomic status, educational background, help‐seeking experience, perceived behavioural control, attitudes, locus of control, personality and subjective norms, and 168 primary research studies were included in the review. Studies were selected based on their publication year, and the context and the variables examined. Information from the studies was systematically entered into a database and organised. Findings show that gender, stigma, help‐seeking experience, attitudes and subjective norms are crucial for help‐seeking in general. More specifically, gender, age, cultural background and personality seem to be related to academic help‐seeking and should therefore be considered when evaluating or designing academic support services. Although other variables were examined in some studies, no trends could be identified for these due to ambivalent results, indicating that the variables related to academic help‐seeking may depend on the context. This review also revealed that there are gaps that should be addressed in future research concerning academic help‐seeking behaviour, while at the same time, if possible, including all variables identified in this review.