The first semester of university life; ‘will I be able to manage it at all?’

By A. Gibney, N. Moore, Feargal Murphy, Sara O’Sullivan. 2011

98 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reports on an Irish study examining first year students’ recollections of their concerns, motivations, level of preparedness and perceived skills on entry to university. The study aims to investigate and understand the implications of the attitudes of first year students as they make the transition to university. It also explores students’ behaviour during their initial weeks at university. It is important to understand the anxieties of new students, their views on their abilities and their confidence in managing their new role as these factors will have consequences for their experience as first year university students. These findings are explored with a view to enhancing the quality of support for students during this key transition.

Subfields: Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/16b8c3b3cbd871734710ae2b047d8bd4c1596051

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Marieke Meeuwisse
2. Marann Byrne
3. Barbara J. Flood
4. W. Hofman
5. Sanne G. A. van Herpen
6. S. Severiens
7. Yilmaz Guney
8. John T. E. Richardson

In Social Psychology

1. Barbara J. Flood
2. W. Hofman
3. Sanne G. A. van Herpen
4. Marann Byrne
5. Marieke Meeuwisse
6. S. Severiens

Citations in the corpus

• Causes of differences in student outcomes (2015, background): “These include a ‘hidden curriculum’, which one study sees as the informal demands and often unspoken assumptions of many universities (Gibney et al., 2011).”
• A head start in higher education: the effect of a transition intervention on interaction, sense of belonging, and academic performance (2020, background): “…performance Transitioning students seem to be particularly concerned about two aspects: developing a sense of belonging in HE and building relationships with peers and faculty within it (Gibney et al. 2011; Palmer, O’Kane, and Owens 2009; Tett, Cree, and Christie 2017; Walton and Brady 2017).”
• Measuring the Academic Self-Efficacy of First-year Accounting Students (2014, background): “Unfortunately, many students find the transition to higher education to be a stressful and emotional experience (Christie et al., 2008; Gibney et al., 2011; Tinto, 1982, 1993), as they struggle to cope with a learning environment that demands higher levels of autonomy, initiative, and self-regulatio”