The influence of social support and social skills on the academic performance of younger individuals and older adult college students

Abstract

The ageing process has provoked a visible increase of older adult students in Brazilian universities. Several studies have been conducted on the development of this older adult student, but few have tested the influence of social skills and perceived social support on academic performance by comparing different age groups. The goal of this longitudinal study was to investigate the influence of social support and social skills on the academic performance of older adult college students compared to younger individuals. The sample was composed of 326 college students (200 younger individuals and 126 older adults), from 13 universities in the metropolitan area of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Multiple hierarchical regression confirmed the predictive power of the social support (but not the social skills) over academic performance. The evolution of academic performance (performance coefficient) was observed for two years. New studies with larger samples in other regional contexts are recommended.

Are low academic achievers less resilient? Resilience of low and high academic achievers in Mainland China

“…Chinese parents and teachers always attached great importance to education (G. Wu & Ding, 2001); under this condition, it was reasonable to understand that HAA tended to receive more compliment, individual attention and positive feedback from both parents and teachers than their LAA peers, which might bring in positive parent–child relationship (Zheng et al, 2020) and teacher–student relationship (Fu & Zhao, 2020). In addition, already with high‐quality academic achievements, HAA might receive even higher education aspirations from both parents and teachers (Spera et al, 2009; Voydanoff & Donnelly, 1999), who then were involved and provided social support to help HAA achieve further more academic success (e.g., Leite et al, 2021; Wen & Li, 2022). Involvement in education was found associated with parent–child (Han & Jun, 2010) and teacher–student relationships (Ruiz‐Gallardo et al, 2016).…”