CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 142Student Stress and CopingMindfulness and Compassion InterventionsHigher Education Research Studies

Stress, self-compassion, and well-being during the transition to college

Kroshus, Emily, Hawrilenko, Matt, Browning, Anne·2021·Social Science & Medicine
DOI 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113514
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Rationale The transition to college presents a period of vulnerability to mental illness, and opportunity for positive psychosocial development.Objective The present study sought to build an explanatory person-centered and contextualized model of student wellbeing in the transition to college.Method Participants were entering first year undergraduate students at a large public university in the United States (n = 5509). Online survey data were collected at three time points across the academic year, with outcomes of depression and anxiety, thriving, and grade point average, and predictors including resilient coping, self-compassion, social support, school connections and the acute and chronic stressors experienced during the transition to college. Latent growth curves were used to examine trajectories of change in depression and anxiety, and a cross-lagged panel model was used to describe a system of how all measured variables influenced each other over time.Results There were four main findings. On average, students experienced moderate increases in depression and anxiety from the summer before college through the spring, with wide variability across students and no clear patterning by demographic groups. Second, self-compassion was the strongest and most consistent predictor of successful transitions. Third, chronic stressors were strongly predictive of more negative outcomes, and self-compassion and coping skills did not buffer their effects. Finally, people most likely to experience chronic stressors over the school year included women, people who identify as sexual minorities and first-generation students.Conclusions Programming to support entering college students should seek to foster self-compassion, while also limiting chronic stressors and reducing their inequitable distribution across the student population.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113514

Cites

85 of 85 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 86 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Kroshus, E., Hawrilenko, M., & Browning, A.
Affiliations
University of Washington (US)
Corresponding author
Kroshus, Emily
ORCID
Venue
Social Science & Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-01
Volume
269
Pages
113514
ISSN
0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113514
OpenAlex
W3098991845
Cited by
142
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 12
FWCI
21.12
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Social Science & Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
University of Washington
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Student Stress and Coping
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
Keywords
transition to college, self-compassion, stress, student well-being, depression, anxiety, thriving, grade point average, resilient coping, social support, school connectedness, chronic stressors, first-generation college students, sexual minorities, gender differences, first-year students, mental health
MeSH terms
Adaptation, Psychological, Anxiety, Empathy, Female, Humans, Students, Universities

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review