Examining the Relationship Between Psychosocial and Academic Outcomes in Higher Education: A Descriptive Analysis

Abstract

This article estimates the relationship between students’ psychosocial and academic outcomes during their first 3 years enrolled at public, 4-year institutions. Our sample comprises students from low-income backgrounds who applied for a competitive scholarship and enrolled at a 4-year public institution. We follow two cohorts of entering students throughout their first 3 years on campus. We observe their cumulative grade point average and persistence decisions each semester, and have annual measures of four psychosocial outcomes: mattering to campus, sense of belonging to campus, academic self-efficacy, and social self-efficacy. We find that psychosocial outcomes are moderately predictive of academic outcomes, with sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy emerging as most predictive of both cumulative grade point avaerage and persistence.

Promoting at-promise student success in 4-year universities: Recommendations from the thompson scholars learning communities.

“…This brief offers insights as to how practitioners can support aspects of students’ psychosocial well-being, particularly those related to students’ relationships with others and perceptions of self. Specifically, this brief will discuss ways of supporting four indicators of psychosocial well-being: sense of belonging, mattering, academic self-efficacy, and social self-efficacy, all of which are related to students’ academic outcomes, including GPA and persistence (Braxton et al, 2014; Swanson, Melguizo, et al, 2021).…”

The Utility of Brief Mattering Subscales for Adolescents: Associations with Learning Motivations, Achievement, Executive Function, Hope, Loneliness, and Risk Behavior

“…Recent studies continue to illustrate the positive correlates of mattering. For instance, Moschella and Banyard (2021) reported evidence of a link between mattering and a measure of college persistence and Swanson et al (2021) reported small but significant associations between perceived mattering to the campus and levels of academic self-efficacy and grade point average. Mattering to campus was assessed with an eightitem scale that the authors developed for the purposes of their study.…”

The Influence of Psychosocial Factors on the Successful Formal Education Trajectories of Young Spanish People in Vulnerable Situations

“…Data collection was conducted between 2022 and 2023. A semi-structured interview guide was constructed ad hoc [49,[61][62][63], with questions based on some of the existing works that relate school success to supporting psychosocial factors [1,2,13,18,20,[27][28][29][30][31][32]. The questions addressed the transversal dimensions of the participants' characteristics and experiences, such as the following: (1) sociodemographic dimension; (2) family and growth context; (3) formal education context; (4) school experiences; (5) relationships and formal, non-formal, and informal support networks; (6) evaluation of the Spanish Educational System; (7) personal characteristics contributing to their formal education success; (8) plans for the future.…”

“…Tindle et al found correlations between academic performance and "social support, motivation, stress, satisfaction, self-efficacy, anxiety and depression, prior academic achievement, study effort, adjustment, family, and emotions" (p. 1) [31]. With a sample of students in situations of social vulnerability, Swanson et al concluded that academic success is related to psychosocial factors such as a sense of belonging and self-efficacy at academic and social levels [32].…”