Student Wellbeing

For many years, there has never been research about the individual experiences of college undergraduate students. The quality of these experiences typically depend on the student’s involvement in on-campus activities. From involvement, students gain leadership, career skills, friends. An obvious mediator of a college student 's well-being and overall experience, is stress. The current study revealed a strong link between levels of stress, LOC, and a student’s overall well-being. Higher levels of internal LOC and lower levels of stress lead to the highest levels of wellbeing. Students that had low to medium levels of involvement showed higher levels of well-being, but as their hours of involvement increased, their overall well-being showed …show more content…
The current study found a slightly positive relationship between involvement and well-being; the more a student is involved in on-campus activities, the higher their well-being would be. Additionally, members of student organizations were more involved in activities beyond their club responsibilities. They showed more engaged behaviors such as going to the library, course learning, conversations, and meeting with professors. Although this study did not look at the specific outcomes of involvement, the factors listed could relate to higher well-being. There is an established relationship between locus of control and positive outcomes, and locus of control and stress. These links can affect college students’ development (Mooney, 1991; Ahlin & Antunes, 2015). This study found a significant relationship between internal LOC and stress, and stress and well-being. Researchers were not able to identify variables that mediate the relationship between locus of control and well-being. The current study determined a significant relationship between internal locus of control and well-being with stress mediating this relationship.
There were several strengths associated with the study. Study strengths include the relatively large sample of undergraduate students (n=134). This large sample size was more representative of the undergraduate college …show more content…
Though stress was found to be a significant moderator, involvement was not. So the question remains of what other variables may be moderators to the locus of control – well-being relationship? Is stress the strongest moderator, or are there other variables that are even more important within this relationship? Further research should be conducted to answer these questions, testing different variables as possible moderators. This way the most accurate answers can be drawn to what combination of variables lead to the highest levels of overall well-being within graduate