This paper presents a meta-analytic review (k=237, N=44,668) of the adjustment to college literature. The review, based on studies using the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire, is organized around three primary themes: (1) the structure of students' adjustment to college, (2) the relationship of adjustment to college constructs with possible antecedents and correlates, and (3) the relationship of adjustment to college constructs with college grades and college retention. Meta-analytic results indicate that adjustment to college is multidimensional, predictive of college grades, and an unusually good predictor of college retention. Adjustment to college is also shown to be moderately related to individual traits, social support, and students' relationships with their parents. Weaker relationships are evident with demographic variables, prior achievement, coping approaches, and variables that reflect students' psychological independence from their parents. Theoretical and practical implications for the study of students' adjustment to college, academic performance, and retention are discussed.Keywords Adjustment to college . College retention . College GPA . Meta-analysis Entry into college presents students with numerous novel challenges that extend beyond the greater academic demands, greater autonomy, and lower level of academic structure that characterizes life at many colleges and universities. First-year students are also required to navigate a new social environment, develop an orientation toward the institution of which they are now a member, become productive members of the university community, adapt to new roles and responsibilities (e.g., managing own finances), manage the separation from friends and family, and engage in the process of making career decisions. Concern about the manner in which students navigate these myriad challenges is reflected both in the orientation programs offered by many colleges and universities as well as the substantial body of educational research that has focused on students' adjustment to college. Many educational researchers have viewed Educ Psychol Rev (2012) 24:133-165

Researchers often use very abbreviated (e.g., 1-item, 2-item) measures of personality traits due to their convenience and ease of use as well as the belief that such measures can adequately capture an individual's personality. Using data from 2 samples (N = 437 employees, N = 355 college students), we show that this practice, particularly the use of single-item measures, can lead researchers to substantially underestimate the role that personality traits play in influencing important behaviors and thereby overestimate the role played by new constructs. That is, the use of very short measures of personality may substantially increase both the Type 1 and Type 2 error rates. We argue that even slightly longer measures can substantially increase the validity of research findings without significant inconvenience to the researcher or research participants.

Reference-group effects (discovered in cross-cultural settings) occur when responses to self-report items are based not on respondents' absolute level of a construct but rather on their level relative to a salient comparison group. In this article, we examine the impact of reference-group effects on the assessment of self-reported personality and attitudes. Two studies illustrate that a reference-group effect can be induced by small changes to instruction sets, changes that mirror the instruction sets of commonly used measures of personality. Scales that specified different reference groups showed substantial reductions in criterion-related validities for academic performance, self-reported counterproductive behaviors, and self-reported health outcomes relative to reference-group-free versions of those scales.