The DOI matches its Crossref record; 85 of the 86 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Stress, self-compassion, and well-being during the transition to college
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.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
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?
In the citing paper
“Self-compassion is considered a protective factor against academic stress [39,95], homesickness, depression, and problems in the transition to college [96,97]”
From Optimization of a Transdiagnostic Mobile Emotion Regulation Intervention for University Students: Protocol for a Microrandomized Trial (2023) · cites this paper as [96]
Citations
Cites
Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to Multiple Testing
Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995) · Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology · doi:10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x · Cited by 109,482
Evaluating Goodness-of-Fit Indexes for Testing Measurement Invariance
Cheung, G. W., & Rensvold, R. B. (2002) · Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal · doi:10.1207/s15328007sem0902_5 · Cited by 16,280
The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support
Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G., & Farley, G. K. (1988) · Journal of Personality Assessment · doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa5201_2 · Cited by 13,339
Hu, L.-T., & Bentler, P. M. (1998) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/1082-989x.3.4.424 · Cited by 12,298
The social readjustment rating scale
Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/0022-3999(67)90010-4 · Cited by 11,560
An Ultra-Brief Screening Scale for Anxiety and Depression: The PHQ–4
Kroenke, K., Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. W., & Löwe, B. (2009) · Psychosomatics · doi:10.1016/s0033-3182(09)70864-3 · Cited by 4,261
A critique of the cross-lagged panel model
Hamaker, E. L., Kuiper, R. M., & Grasman, R. P. P. P. (2015) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/a0038889 · Cited by 4,005
Resilient Individuals Use Positive Emotions to Bounce Back From Negative Emotional Experiences.
Tugade, M. M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2004) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320 · Cited by 3,947
Leamy, M., Bird, V., Boutillier, C. L., Williams, J., & Slade, M. (2011) · British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.110.083733 · Cited by 3,038
Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the Self-Compassion Scale
Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011) · Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy · doi:10.1002/cpp.702 · Cited by 2,997
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Tatum, 2000, The complexity of identity: who am I, vol. 2, 5
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Donaldson, C., Moore, G., & Hawkins, J. (2022) · School Mental Health · doi:10.1007/s12310-022-09539-w · Cited by 77
“Experiencing chronic stressors in the first year of university is associated with poorer mental health outcomes, and chronic stressors are more common among first-generation students (Kroshus et al., 2021).”
BackgroundPicton, A., Greenfield, S., & Parry, J. M. (2022) · BMC Medical Education · doi:10.1186/s12909-022-03158-4 · Cited by 84
“It is hypothesised that one of the strongest and most consistent positive predictors of successful transition to higher education, particularly for students dealing with mental health problems, is self-compassion [49].”
BackgroundHut, M., Glass, C. R., Degnan, K. A., & Minkler, T. O. (2021) · Asian Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.ajsep.2021.06.002 · Cited by 53
Hatun, O., & Kurtça, T. T. (2022) · Current Psychology · doi:10.1007/s12144-022-02824-6 · Cited by 52
The role of self‐compassion in the mental health of adults with ADHD
Beaton, D. M., Sirois, F. M., & Milne, E. (2022) · Journal of Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1002/jclp.23354 · Cited by 46
“This has been demonstrated in a longitudinal study that assessed levels of self‐compassion and mental health as high school students transitioned to university (Kroshus et al., 2021).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Kroshus, E., Hawrilenko, M., & Browning, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kroshus, Emily
- Venue
- Social Science & Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-01
- Volume
- 269
- Pages
- 113514
- ISSN
- 0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
- 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
- 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