Social microclimates and well-being

Abstract

The transition to college is a challenging time during which many students suffer declines in well-being. Social connections play a key role in supporting mental health, but only tell part of the story of social life on campus. For instance, the personalities of one’s friends and neighbors on campus contribute to a “social microclimate.” Here, we quantify the collective impact of individual, social network, and community factors in the well-being of a first-year college cohort during (i) their first academic term and (ii) a stressor (the COVID-19 pandemic). Students who maintained supportive connections and belonged to emotionally stable and tight-knit microclimates reported greater well-being in their first academic term, and less anxiety when exposed to stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the importance of both personal relationships and community factors in supporting mental health.

Social support and adaptive emotion regulation: Links between social network measures, emotion regulation strategy use, and health.

“…Specifically, participants were asked to nominate between two and five unique individuals in response to the following eight questions: (a) “Who in your residential college are your closest friends?” (b) “Who in your residential college do you spend the most time with?” (c) “Who in your residential college have you asked for advice about your social life?” (d) “Who do you turn to in your residential college when something bad happens?” (e) “Who in your residential college do you share good news with?” (f) “Who in your residential college makes you feel supported and cared for?” (g) “Who in your residential college is most empathetic?” And (h) “Who in your residential college usually makes you feel positive?” Following a similar method from Courtney et al (2021), we combined the unique nominations made across all subnetworks (represented by the eight questions above) to create a single, aggregate network per participant. The total number of unique support ties identified by the participant (i.e., network outdegree) served as a global measure of perceived social support (Courtney et al, 2021). In addition to this aggregate network measure, we also included nominations from individual subnetworks to compare, where relevant, all associations of interest using the aggregate measure versus subnetworks that may more directly index social support (e.g., “Who in your residential college makes you feel supported and cared for?”).…”

“…And (h) "Who in your residential college usually makes you feel positive?" Following a similar method from Courtney et al (2021), we combined the unique nominations made across all subnetworks (represented by the eight questions above) to create a single, aggregate network per participant. The total number of unique support ties identified by the participant (i.e., network outdegree) served as a global measure of perceived social support (Courtney et al, 2021).…”

“…Following a similar method from Courtney et al (2021), we combined the unique nominations made across all subnetworks (represented by the eight questions above) to create a single, aggregate network per participant. The total number of unique support ties identified by the participant (i.e., network outdegree) served as a global measure of perceived social support (Courtney et al, 2021). In addition to this aggregate network measure, we also included nominations from individual subnetworks to compare, where relevant, all associations of interest using the aggregate measure versus subnetworks that may more directly index social support (e.g., "Who in your residential college makes you feel supported and cared for?…”

“…Having a greater number of social connections buffers mental health from the impacts of stress (Bolger & Eckenrode, 1991). Students who identify more supportive connections within their community (i.e., outdegree) experience less psychological distress and greater life satisfaction (Courtney et al, 2021). This relationship between social connections and health may occur via psychosocial mechanisms, including social support and coping effectiveness (Berkman & Glass, 2000).…”

Social microclimates and well-being.

“…This study was not preregistered. The data and code for the analyses presented here are available on the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GYZJK (Courtney et al, 2021). Because raw network nomination data are potentially identifiable, reduced and preprocessed participant-level data are provided.…”