Explaining the association between subjective social status and mental health among university students using an impact
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Explaining the association between subjective social status and mental health among university students using an impact ratings approach Mark Rubin1 Received: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 31 October 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Previous research has found a positive association between social class and mental health among university students. Various mediators of this association have been proposed. However, the extent to which students perceive these mediators as having an impact on their mental health has not been investigated. It is important to investigate this issue because students who do not perceive issues as having an impact on their mental health may not be motivated to address those issues. In the current study, 402 first-year undergraduate psychology students from a large Australian university indicated the extent to which 32 issues had a negative impact on their mental health over the past six months. Students rated lack of money, time management, coursework assessment items, lack of sleep, and course marks as having the largest impact on their mental health. Lack of money and time management mediated the positive association between subjective social status and mental health over (a) the past week and (b) the past month. Coursework assessment items and course marks mediated the positive association between subjective social status and satisfaction with the university experience. It is concluded that interventions should focus on these relatively high impact issues in order to address social class differences in students’ mental health and university satisfaction. Keywords Course assessment · Lack of money · Mental health · Social class · University satisfaction · University students
* Mark Rubin [email protected] 1
School of Psychology, Behavioural Sciences Building, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia Vol.:(0123456789)
20
Page 2 of 21
SN Soc Sci
(2021) 1:20
Introduction Students from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds tend to have poorer mental health at university than students from higher SES backgrounds (Ibrahim et al., 2013; King et al. 2011; Rubin et al. 2016; Rubin and Kelly 2015; Said et al. 2013; for a recent review, see Rubin et al. 2019). Prior work in this area has found that classism, sense of control, social contact with other students, and parenting style operate as mediators (Allan et al. 2016; Ibrahim et al. 2013; Rubin et al. 2016; Rubin and Kelly 2015). In other words, controlling for these variables tends to reduce the size of the association between social class and mental health, suggesting that social class differences in mental health are partly explained by social class differences in classism, sense of control, social contact, and parenting style. However, it remains unclear whether students perceive these sorts of issues as having a substantial impact on their mental health. No prior research has addressed this question of perceived impact, and yet there are two reasons why it should be addressed. Fi
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