‘It was nothing to do with the university, it was just the people’: the role of social support in the first‐year experience of higher education

By P. Wilcox, S. Winn, Marylynn Fyvie-Gauld. 2005

1,061 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article argues that to understand higher education student retention, equal emphasis needs to be placed on successful integration into the social world of the university as into the academic world. To date, sociological research reflecting first‐year students’ perceptions of the processes involved in developing social lives at university is scarce. Here the concept of ‘social support’ is used to analyse interviews with 34 first‐year students, investigating the processes through which social integration (or lack of it) influenced their decision as to whether or not to leave university. Our data support the claim that making compatible friends is essential to retention, and that students’ living arrangements are central to this process. Such friends provide direct emotional support, equivalent to family relationships, as well as buffering support in stressful situations. Course friendships and relationships with personal tutors are important but less significant, providing primarily instrumental, informational and appraisive support.

Subfields: Education, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6fbbe60473d2530ba21bf54f4f2a497b80313ee

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In Education

In Political Science and International Relations

G. Clark

Citations in the corpus

Understanding undergraduate student perceptions of mental health, mental well-being and help-seeking behaviour (2016, background): “Previous work found that social support from friends made at university has been implicated in the decision-making process when students are considering whether to leave university (Wilcox, Winn, and Fyvie-Gauld 2005).”
Seeking support: researching first‐year students’ experiences of coping with academic life (2010, background): “But in other studies, some students proved to enjoy collaborative work and managed to build new friendships through them, which was assessed as a ‘real positive of group work’ despite such expectations (Wilcox et al., 2005, p. 717).”
The first semester of university life; ‘will I be able to manage it at all?’ (2011, background): “Wilcox et al. (2005) argue that social support from friends is essential to student success and this is perhaps one of the issues why peer mentoring schemes have become widespread as part of many orientation programmes.”
Perceived Social Support and Well Being: First-Year Student Experience in University. (2014, background): “As mentioned by Wilcox et al. (2005) emotional support can have a ‘buffering effect against the stressful experience of being alone in a new situation’ (p. 718).”
Degrees of resilience: profiling psychological resilience and prospective academic achievement in university inductees (2014, background): “Indeed, the items that create these sub-domains in the CD-RISC may readily convert into teachable behaviours and approaches, many of which have proven worth for promoting retention and achievement in HE (Barefoot, 2000; Wilcox et al., 2005).”
Listening to student voices: student researchers exploring undergraduate experiences of university transition (2012, background): “Whilst there is a proliferation of qualitative studies exploring students’ personal accounts of transition (e.g. Britton and Baxter 1999; Brooks 2003, 2007; Warin and Dempster 2007; Wilcox et al. 2005), a larger proportion of research has utilised quantitative survey designs to study aspects includi”
Navigating entry into higher education: the transition to independent learning and living (2021, background): “This may be, as Wilcox, Winn, and Fyvie-Gauld (2005) suggest, because social networks at university become the main source of emotional support when student’s prior support networks, such as friends and family at home, are less accessible.”