The role of hope in college transition: Its cross-lagged relationships with psychosocial resources and emotional well-being in first-year college students

Introduction

College transition is often regarded as the most stressful phase of life by college students. Hence, it is necessary to find ways to help them adjust more smoothly to this transition. Hope, as conceptualized by C. R. Snyder, has been widely studied as a predictor of optimal functioning and has been shown to be associated with better adjustment among college students. This study aimed to shed light on the role of hope in college transition by examining its unique reciprocal relationships with an array of important psychosocial resources and emotional well-being among first-year college students.

Methods

Data were collected from a sample of Hong Kong college freshmen (N = 433, Median_age = 18 years old, 63.7% female) at two time points. At each time point, participants completed self-reported measures tapping into their levels of hope, psychosocial resources, and emotional well-being. Psychological resources included general and academic self-efficacy, meaning in life, and optimism. Social resources included secure attachment, perceived school environment, and social support. Emotional well-being was operationalized as positive and negative emotions. Cross-lagged panel models were constructed and tested by path analyses.

Results

When autoregression and the effects of other variables were controlled, a greater sense of hope uniquely predicted higher levels of general and academic self-efficacy, greater presence of life meanings, more secure attachment, and more positive and fewer negative emotions. On the other hand, higher levels of meaning in life (both presence and search) and social support uniquely predicted greater hope. Academic hope and presence of life meanings reciprocally predicted one another, whereas other significant cross-lagged relationships were unidirectional.

Conclusions

The findings suggest interventions that promote hope can be useful in helping college freshmen adjust to the new college environment by enhancing their psychosocial resources and emotional well-being. Such interventions would be more effective if they included elements that boost meaning in life and social support, which are expected to further enhance the perceptions of hope.