3.2 Statement of Authorship
3.3.7 Discussion
73 3.3.6 Summary.
This systematic review attempted to synthesise 27 years of research with first-year international and RRR university students aged 17 - 20 years, investigating
(a) associations of social support with academic success and mental health; and (b) the association of social support with type of term-time residence.
The search yielded no Australian studies. The researcher read the full texts of 45 articles and theses. The original criteria for eligibility were modified but the aim and focus of this systematic review were maintained. Seven studies conducted in the USA met most (for example, six of seven) of the criteria for inclusion in the review. The seven studies used measures of perceived available social support.
74 persistence, and academic adjustment, only one study used GPA while three used intention to persist, or academic adjustment.
The study which used GPA (Nicpon et al., 2006) did not find an association with perceived available social support. However, the meta-analysis of 241 datasets across thirteen years (1997 - 2010) of research with university students by Richardson et al. (2012) did so. Thus, the conclusion could not be drawn from this systematic review that there is no association between perceived available social support and relocated first-year students’ GPA.
The study by Nicpon et al. (2006) was also one of two finding small positive
associations of social support with the medium-term indicator of academic success, namely, intention to persist. A third study (Katz, 2017) investigating perceived available social support and academic success also found a small positive association (β .23, p < .01) using academic adjustment as the outcome. Each study used scales with good reliability measured with Cronbach’s Alpha. Thus, the review found some evidence that perceived available social support has small direct and indirect positive associations with indicators of medium- term first-year students’ academic success.
This review found the strongest weight of evidence with the small, positive
association of perceived available social support on several indicators of students’ mental or psychosocial health (see Table 8, above). With evidence of the associations of perceived available social support on measures of academic success and mental health, it is noteworthy that the first-year students facing the greatest academic and psychosocial challenges at university are those from abroad. Nevertheless, all students leaving home and relocating for higher education experience an abrupt depletion in their perceived available social support (Hechanova-Alampay et al., 2002). Finding studies investigating for any association between social support and relocated students’ type of residence was the second aim of this review.
The second hypothesis that there is no evidence of an association of relocated, first- year students’ perception of available social support and type of term-time residence could be neither accepted nor rejected unequivocally.
75 Universities may require on-campus residence for at least the first year of tertiary education. The websites of three universities included in this review stated such a
requirement. Bitz (2013), for example, conducted the study at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Nebraska, where first-year students reside on-campus regardless of geographical distance from home. Any associations of perceived available social support and various types of residence could not be conducted with first-year students at universities with such a policy.
Noteworthy, however, was that Bitz (2013) found different effects of social support on measures associated with mental health (adjustment) for rural compared with urban students residing on-campus. Bitz (2013) concluded that for rural students, there was a direct effect of social support on adjustment in addition to an effect mediated by well-being. For urban students, however, only the effect mediated by well-being was found. The finding was interpreted as an indication of intrinsic differences between rural and urban populations of first-year students (Bitz, 2013).
Two of the seven studies did indeed seek an association of social support with type of residence. One study found no association between residential hall capacity (small, medium and large) and social support. Social support did not differ according to the number of students in a hall (Suitor, 2014). Nicpon et al. (2006) compared students residing in a hall on-campus with those living with family, or friends off-campus. The differences between the two groups in levels of social support, loneliness, GPA, and academic persistence were significant. However, since they accounted for only a very small amount of variance, the authors concluded that, for their sample, GPA was the greatest discriminator, that is, students residing in a hall on-campus had considerably higher GPAs than students residing off-campus. Future research could usefully investigate further the differences in outcomes associated with perceived available social support between first-year students residing on- campus or in large university-affiliated residences and those residing with peers in small occupancy residences off-campus.
76 3.3.8 Strengths and limitations.
A strength of the review was the inclusion of two studies written as unpublished doctoral dissertations/theses extracted from the “grey” literature. The studies provided more detailed information than that available in word-limited journal articles. The review was also strong in rigour and focus. In finding such a limited number of investigations related to the research questions, the implication that more research is needed becomes clear.
A major limitation of this systematic review was the scope. Seven English-language studies were found eligible for inclusion. All were quantitative, cross-sectional, survey studies. The search identified no longitudinal studies. Qualitative and mixed-method studies were excluded for the practical reasons of consistency, simplicity, and a manageable number of studies. However, the review lacks the perspectives and findings of researchers using other designs.
While all studies measured perceived available social support as a predictor, not all studies included short- and medium-term measures of academic success, and a mental/
psychological health measure. As a result, only one study used GPA (short-term) as an outcome and, unlike the meta-analysis of Richardson et al. (2012), found no association with perceived available social support. A further limitation was geographic region since the eligible studies were conducted in the USA, although in different states. Australia
endeavours to increase the populations of both international and RRR students studying at its universities. The needs of such relocated students and the factors associated with their
academic success, mental health, and well-being is a field open for Australian research.