Predict College Students Research Articles

Academic Stressors as Predictors of Achievement Goal Orientations of American and ESL International Students

This study explores academic stressors and achievement goal orientations of college students, and the relationship between these variables using academic stressors as predictors. As the number of English as a Second Language (ESL) international students has increased rapidly in the US, students’ status (American or ESL international) was also examined. A total of 715 students participated in the study from two universities in the US. Results show that ESL international and American students have different achievement goal orientations and academic stressors. Additionally, student status and academic stressors predict college students’ various goal orientations. The implications provide useful suggestions to higher education professionals in order to better understand and assist diverse students to succeed in academia.

Using a theoretical approach to predict college students’ non-medical use of prescription drugs – a survival analysis

Objectives This study assesses students’ non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD) from college entrance to graduation, and examines factors that predict NMUPD. Participants: The study was conducted between May 2011 and September 2015 with 338 students. Methods: Longitudinal cohort study design was used to examine NMUPD across time, and NMUPD-related attitudes and subjective norms. Five yearly interviews were conducted to collect data. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to examine time to NMUPD. Results: Thirty-five percent of study participants reported NMUPD; the majority of those initiated non-medical use before their third year in college. Analyses indicated that more positive attitudes towards NMUPD (HR = 1.73, p < 0.001), increased subjective norms regarding NMUPD (HR = 1.01, p < 0.01), and gender (male) (HR= 1.89, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with sooner NMUPD. Conclusions: Findings suggest that NMUPD prevention efforts that target mutable factors such as attitudes and subjective norms should be implemented early during students’ college careers.

An exploratory value-cost approach in predicting college students’ achievement goals in multicultural education

ABSTRACT Student resistance is inevitable in the process of multicultural education, but few researchers have explored the dynamics of student motivation. The purpose of this study was to help bridging the gap between motivation and multicultural education by examining the value and cost beliefs of college students in diversity learning, and how those beliefs predict their achievement goals. Participants were 173 college students who were predominantly education majors (86.1%), White (65.9%), and female (80.9%). Exploratory factor analysis results showed that students mainly harbored value and cost beliefs in diversity learning. Multivariate multiple regression analyses results demonstrated an overall significant predictive power of students’ value-cost beliefs over their achievement goals. In particular, students who perceived higher values of multicultural education reported more mastery-approach goals, whereas those who perceived higher cost of multicultural education endorsed more performance-approach goals. While confirming the importance of instilling high values to help cultivate optimal learning goals for college students, the results suggest the potential detrimental effects of perceived high cost of multicultural education. The study has important implications for educators to improve student motivation in diversity learning. Future research can further examine the factor structure of college students’ value-cost beliefs and their longitudinal effects on achievement goals.

Goal orientation, motivational climate, and exercise as predictors of eating disorder risk factors among college students

Objectives: This study examined how goal orientation, motivational climate, and exercise could be used to predict college students’ eating disorder symptomology. Participants: Recruited in February 2017, the participants included 275 college-aged students from a university in the southeastern United States. Methods: Using achievement goal theory as the framework to conceptualize motivations behind eating disorder behaviors, each participant filled out questionnaires related to goal mindsets, perceptions of the social climate in the university recreation center, and exercise habits. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analyses, with R coefficients being used to evaluate prediction models. Results: The results of the study suggested that goal orientation and ego-involving climate were the only significant predictors of eating disorder symptomology, accounting for 3.4% of the total variance. Conclusions: This study provided preliminary evidence of the importance of studying achievement goal theory-related variables that contribute to our understanding of eating disorder symptomology in the collegiate population.

Retrospective Reports of Parental Socialization of Physical Pain During Childhood Predicting Emerging Adults’ Current Coping With Pain

Although a bulk of the literature has examined the methods by which people cope with physical pain, little attention has been devoted to how people learn to respond to pain. The current study examined the relation between college students&amp;rsquo; reports of parental socialization of pain during childhood and their current coping with pain. One hundred twenty-four (65.3% female) college students reported on two methods of parental socialization they experienced during childhood: a) their mothers&amp;rsquo; direct responses to their physical pain and b) mothers&amp;rsquo; modeling of how they coped with their own pain. College students also reported on their own current coping strategies regarding physical pain. Results indicated that retrospective reports of mothers&amp;rsquo; active coping with their own pain and mothers&amp;rsquo; promotion responses to their child&amp;rsquo;s pain during childhood significantly positively predicted college students&amp;rsquo; current active coping. These findings suggest the relevance of both methods of pain socialization (parental modeling and parents&amp;rsquo; direct responses) for college-age children&amp;rsquo;s current coping with pain.

Factors Predicting Intent to Intervene with a Potentially Suicidal Peer

The current study examined how the theory of planned behavior (TPB) constructs predict college students’ intent to ask about suicide and refer a potentially suicidal peer to support. Using an experimental design, 420 college students (Mage = 19.61, SD = 1.50 yrs) were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes depicting a peer in distress that varied suicide risk severity (low vs. high) and perceived causes of the distress (internal vs. external). Participants read their vignette and answered questions measuring TPB constructs and items assessing intent to ask about suicide and intent to refer the peer to services. Results indicated that subjective norms were associated with intent to ask about suicide and attitudes impact intent to refer. Only the interaction between risk severity and perceived behavioral control in predicting intent to refer and intent to ask were significant. Peers who perceive risk to be high are more likely to refer peers regardless of perceived behavioral control and are increasingly more likely to ask about suicide as perceived behavioral control increases. When risk severity is low and perceived behavioral control is low, peers are less likely to refer or ask about suicide. The theory of planned behavior has relevance to understanding peer intent to intervene with an at-risk peer and may be beneficial to guiding the development of effective suicide prevention programs.

Genes, Roommates, and Residence Halls: A Multidimensional Study of the Role of Peer Drinking on College Students' Alcohol Use.

Peer drinking is one of the most robust predictors of college students' alcohol use and can moderate students' genetic risk for alcohol use. Peer effect research generally suffers from 2 problems: selection into peer groups and relying more on perceptions of peer alcohol use than peers' self-report. The goal of the present study was to overcome those limitations by capitalizing on a genetically informed sample of randomly assigned college roommates to examine multiple dimensions of peer influence and the interplay between peer effects and genetic predisposition on alcohol use, in the form of polygenic scores. We used a subsample (n=755) of participants from a university-wide, longitudinal study at a large, diverse, urban university. Participants reported their own alcohol use during fall and spring and their perceptions of college peers' alcohol use in spring. We matched individuals into their rooms and residence halls to create a composite score of peer-reported alcohol use for each of those levels. We examined multiple dimensions of peer influence and whether peer influence moderated genetic predisposition to predict college students' alcohol use using multilevel models to account for clustering at the room and residence hall level. We found that polygenic scores (β=0.12), perceptions of peer drinking (β=0.37), and roommates' self-reported drinking (β=0.10) predicted alcohol use (all ps<0.001), while average alcohol use across residence hall did not (β=-0.01, p=0.86). We found no evidence for interactions between peer influence and genome-wide polygenic scores for alcohol use. Our findings underscore the importance of genetic predisposition on individual alcohol use and support the potentially causal nature of the association between peer influence and alcohol use.

Does the Andersen Behavioral Model of Health Services Use predict college students’ use of on-campus mental health services?

Objective: 10–50% of college students meet the diagnostic criteria for one or more mental illnesses; unfortunately, less than half seek treatment. This study assessed the predictive power of specific variables on students’ use of on-campus mental health resources using the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) II. Participants: Respondents included undergraduate and graduate students ages 18–35 years (n = 96,121). Methods: We analyzed data from the ACHA-NCHA II Fall 2014 and Spring 2015. Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services Use enabled selection of predisposing, enabling, and need predictor variables; these were analyzed individually and collectively. Results: Predisposing, enabling, and need variables accounted for 9%, 2.3%, and 17% of the overall variance. Significant variables associated with a student’s decision to access on-campus mental health services accounted for 23% of variance total. Conclusions: This insight could allow universities to better recognize students at-risk for needing but not accessing mental health services.

There Is Virtually No Excuse: The Frequency and Predictors of College Students' Bystander Intervention Behaviors Directed at Online Victimization.

Research shows that a large percentage of college students have experienced online victimization. However, bystander intervention behaviors directed at online contexts are absent from both the online victimization and bystander intervention research. With a sample of undergraduate college students, the current study explores the frequency and predictors of bystander intervention behaviors in response to online situations. Results show that a majority of students intervened during the past academic year when faced with the opportunity. Individuals with high self-control, who previously experienced online victimization, and/or witnessed positive peers' norms offline are more likely to intervene.

Facets of dispositional mindfulness versus sources of social support predicting college students’ psychological adjustment

Objective: This study examined the relative contribution of five dispositional mindfulness (DM) facets and two aspects of social support along with sex in predicting psychological adjustment. Participants: Three hundred fifty-three undergraduates (72% female; M = 18.82 years) participated with data collected from September 2014 through March 2016. Methods: Self-report measures of DM, social support, perceived stress, and emotional well-being were completed. Results: Sex and higher scores on specific mindfulness facets (ie, nonreactivity, nonjudging) predicted lower stress and greater emotional well-being. Higher family support predicted lower stress, whereas friend support predicted greater emotional well-being. The mindfulness facets were stronger predictors of adjustment than the social support domains. Females reported higher perceived stress and lower emotional well-being than males, and males scored significantly higher on total mindfulness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity. Conclusions: Results have implications for mindfulness-based interventions with college students such that focusing on the nonjudging and nonreactivity facets may enhance effectiveness.

Reexamination of the Five‐Factor Model and College Students' Treatment‐Seeking Attitudes

This study was an attempt to replicate and extend the previous research by Puma () and Kakhnovets () on the relationships between the 5‐factor model of personality (FFM) and college students' attitudes toward seeking counseling. With a sample of 458 undergraduate students, the authors found that participant sex, prior treatment experiences, and 3 of the FFM factors (openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) predicted college students' attitudes toward counseling, but there was no evidence of moderator effects.

Predicting College Student Drinking and Smoking Intentions With Cognitively Accessible Attitudes and Norms.

Understanding the factors that make college students more likely to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes is key to developing effective interventions in order to reduce these behaviors. This study sought to understand entering college students' intentions to engage in smoking and drinking behavior by examining the cognitive accessibility (ease of retrieval from memory) of attitudes and norms for drinking. A sample of 413 first-year college students living in on-campus residence halls participated in the study in the first 2 weeks of their first semester of college. Reaction time measures of attitudes and norms assessed the cognitive accessibility of these constructs. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted. Results indicated that the cognitive accessibility of both attitudes and peer injunctive norms predicted behavioral intentions to drink and smoke. Our findings indicate that when injunctive peer norms are accessible from memory, they are better predictors of drinking and smoking intentions than descriptive norms or injunctive family norms. Our work provides important guidance for interventions to reduce risky behavior in college students and suggests that emphasizing social costs of these behaviors may be a promising strategy.

Predict the Entrepreneurial Intention of Fresh Graduate Students Based on an Adaptive Support Vector Machine Framework

Under the background of “innovation and entrepreneurship,” how to scientifically and rationally choose employment or independent entrepreneurship according to their own comprehensive situation is of great significance to the planning and development of their own career and the social adaptation of university personnel training. This study aims to develop an adaptive support vector machine framework, called RF‐CSCA‐SVM, for predicting college students′ entrepreneurial intention in advance; that is, students choose to start a business or find a job after graduation. RF‐CSCA‐SVM combines random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), sine cosine algorithm (SCA), and chaotic local search. In this framework, RF is used to select the most important factors; SVM is employed to establish the relationship model between the factors and the students’ decision to choose to start their own business or look for jobs. SCA is used to tune the optimal parameters for SVM. Additionally, chaotic local search is utilized to enhance the search capability of SCA. A total of 300 students were collected to develop the predictive model. To validate the developed method, other four meta‐heuristic based SVM methods were used for comparison in terms of classification accuracy, Matthews Correlation Coefficients (MCC), sensitivity, and specificity. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can be regarded as a promising success with the excellent predictive performance. Promisingly, the established adaptive SVM framework might serve as a new candidate of powerful tools for entrepreneurial intention prediction.

Predictors of College Students’ Likelihood to Report Hypothetical Rape: Rape Myth Acceptance, Perceived Barriers to Reporting, and Self-Efficacy

Rape myth acceptance (RMA), perceived barriers, and self-efficacy were examined as predictors of likelihood to report different types of rape to law enforcement among 409 undergraduates. Participants had lower likelihood to report incapacitated compared to physically forced rape. Men had lower reporting likelihood than women for rape perpetrated by the same and opposite sex and were more likely to perceive several barriers. RMA and perceived barriers predicted a lower likelihood to report several types of rape. Among men, higher self-efficacy predicted increased reporting likelihood. Targeting RMA and decreasing perceived barriers is imperative to increase college students’ likelihood to report rape to local and campus law enforcement.

Financial Socialization of College Students: Domain-General and Domain-Specific Perspectives

This study investigated the association of domain-general and domain-specific parenting practices with college students’ financial attitudes and behaviors. Data came from a survey of college students (n = 585, 156 males) aged 19–32 attending a Midwestern University. Parents’ financial behaviors significantly predicted college students’ financial attitudes. Path analysis indicated that college students’ financial attitudes mediated the association between their perceptions of parents’ financial behaviors and their own financial behaviors. Parental avoidance of financial conversation was inversely associated with college students’ financial attitudes, and parental disclosure of financial information was positively associated with college students’ financial attitudes. Family communication pattern significantly predicted college students’ financial attitudes and moderated the association between parents’ financial behaviors and college students’ financial attitudes. These findings underscore the importance of examining both domain-general and domain-specific parenting practices in socialization and indicate that parental explicit financial communication may amplify or attenuate the influence of parental modeling.

An application of the theory of normative social behavior to bystander intervention for sexual assault

Objective: Given the high prevalence of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses, the current study examines predictors of college students’ intentions to intervene to prevent sexual assault through the lens of the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB). Participants: One hundred eighty-six undergraduate students age 18–25 were recruited from an introductory course at a large Midwestern university. Methods: Data were collected through an online survey during the 2015–2016 academic year. Results: Results indicated that descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and outcome expectations had direct positive effects on behavioral intention. However, no direct effect of group identity on intention was found. In addition to these main effects, an interaction between descriptive and injunctive norms was also observed. Conclusions: The results of the current study speak to theoretical questions surrounding the nature of TNSB variables, as well as several practical implications for coordinated efforts to promote bystander intervention on college campuses.

The Role of Self-Identity in Predicting College Students’ Intention to Consume Fruits and Vegetables

ObjectiveTo identify factors influencing intention to consume fruits and vegetables (F&V) among college students by applying the Theory of Planned Behavior with the inclusion of self-identity and past behavior. DesignCross-sectional study conducted in 2017. SettingUndergraduate classes at the University of Alabama. ParticipantsA total of 343 undergraduate students, mean age 20.3 years, participated in the study. Main Outcome Measure(s)Participants completed validated instruments measuring Theory of Planned Behavior variables, past behavior, and self-identity. AnalysisStructural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Overall chi-square goodness of fit, comparative fit index, root mean square error of approximation, and Tucker-Lewis Index were used to assess model fit. ResultsModel fit indices showed that the hypothesized structural equation modeling model provided a good fit to the data (χ2 = 306.35; degrees of freedom = 104, root mean square error of approximation = 0.08; comparative fit index =0.95; Tucker-Lewis Index = 0.94). Self-identity was the most significant predictor of intention to consume fruits and vegetables, followed by attitude, past behavior, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm among college students. Conclusions and ImplicationsNutrition education advocating the role of increased F&V consumption in positive self-identity, such as handouts incorporating images relatable to college students, may increase college students’ intention to consume F&V.

Reasons for Utilizing Mental Health Services as Predictors of College Students' Alcohol Risk.

The authors examined college student drinkers' (N = 153) reasons for seeking counseling services and risk for alcohol problems. Students seeking help for impulse- or anger-related issues and depression were at heightened risk for alcohol problems. Only 10% of students sought alcohol-related help despite high rates of hazardous alcohol use (80%) and dependence (39%). Targeted screening and intervention in college counseling centers may enable providers to effectively identify and treat students in need of alcohol treatment.

Does Facebook Use Predict College Students’ Social Capital? A Replication of Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe’s (2007) Study Using the Original and More Recent Measures of Facebook Use and Social Capital

In 2007 Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe published an article on the positive association between Facebook use and social capital that started a decade of research on the social outcomes of social network site use. Although cited almost 9,000 times, it received critique on the conceptualization and operationalization of Facebook use and social capital. In this study we replicate Ellison et al.’s study with original and alternative measures of social capital and Facebook use, thereby shedding light on the robustness, stability, and ecological validity of the original findings. We found that Facebook intensity positively predicts the original social capital measures, lending support to the validity of the original findings. Its relationship with structural measures, however, was weak for bridging and absent for bonding social capital.

Assessing attitudes of college students toward cross-cultural relationships: Implications for social work practice, research, and education

ABSTRACTHigher education in America is a major social institution and an incubator of intellectual thought, holding an important and transformative place in the public domain, but it has also been implicated in the perpetuation of inequality, and the feeding of racial animus. The research question guiding this quantitative study explored predictors of college students’ perceptions of interracial relationships, which led to the querying of factors likely to impact social distance regarding interracial relationships at a mid-sized, diverse, rural university in the south. Two instruments were utilized to test the variables; the Bogardus Social Distance scale and the Social Dominance Orientation scale. The findings indicate statistical significance among two of the three variables examined, when controlling for socioeconomic and demographic variables; positive interracial experiences (p = < .002) and, greater amounts of interracial social contact (p = < .046) predict lower social distances regarding interracial relationships. Implications for higher education involve greater efforts toward social inclusion, increased cultural sensitivity, and an acknowledgment of the current and past structural and systemic inequities that have hindered positive race relations, and a vow to rectify those.