Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila

Intramuros, Manila

A Comparative Study on the Well-Being

of Commuting and Dorm Students

in terms of their Personality Traits

and Social Support

BS Psychology 1-2

Abiñon, Stephanie A.

Fadul, Gladys Anne S.

Pilar, Josh Kyle

Rodriguez, Jemieca Anne M.

Viado, John Dominic F.

 Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

Well-Being

Mental Health Foundation UK (2015). “Well-being can be understood as how people feel

and how they function, both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives as

a whole.”

World Health Organization (2014). “Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in

which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of

life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her

community.”

College Living Environments and Stress: Commuters Versus On-Campus Residency

(Horvath, 2012). “Many researchers have studied different effects on students' health and

academic performance. Different effects could be from outside stressors such as family, friends,

or relationships. A number of previous research studies focused on the lone factor of on-campus

housing, with the majority holding the belief that on-campus housing is the best choice for

students.” “Turley and Wodtke also point out that it is easier for on-campus students to maintain

a social life than those who commute, and therefore the on-campus students will most likely

engage in more social activities (2010).”

Freshman Year Living Arrangements and College Experiences for Local Students (2012).

When it comes to becoming socially integrated into the college campus, the results of qualitative
research can be influential. Such research has presented support for on-campus students

becoming more easily integrated into the social life of the institution (Christie & Dinham,1991)

and being able to more easily meet new people (Johnson et al., 1995). As for commuters, they

benefit from being less exposed to alcohol thus having lower levels of alcohol consumption

(Fenzel & Hessler, 2001) and also being less susceptible to alcohol addiction (Valliant &

Scanlan, 1996).”

The Impact of Residence on First-Year Students’ Academic Success and Adjustment to

Campus life (2011). “Compared to their off-campus classmates, significantly greater percentages

of students living on campus rated themselves as successful or very successful in: developing

effective study skills (66.2% vs. 56.3%), utilizing campus services available to students (65.3%

vs. 50.3%), developing close friendships with students (82.9% vs. 60.7%), establishing a

network of friends on campus, compared to (80.3% vs. 60.9%). Finally, relative to their peers

living away from campus, students in residence halls were generally more satisfied with their

experiences at UK.”

Social Support

Fernandez-Gonzales, et.al (2015), “This is one of the most widely investigated factors of

protection. It has had favourable results in terms of increasing individual resistance to life

changes, stressful situations, personal crises and coping with disease, especially chronic

diseases.” “Social support can be defines as both real and perceived support from the

community, social networks and close friends, whether it is instrumental or emotional support…

involves behaviours that directly help those in need, such as looking after someone, whereas

emotional support refers to showing care, love or trust.” “In the academic field, social support is

given by people who are close to the students using the available resources, which makes it a
safe emotional support as well as an opportunity for students to share their interests and to feel

understood and respected.”

Kong, Ding, & Zhao (2015), “males with high gratitude scores are more likely to get

greater social support than females, while females with high social support scores tended to

report greater life satisfaction than males”

Budge, Kinton Rossman, & Howard ( 2013) “ more facilitative coping (e.g., seeking

help) was related to less anxiety, whereas more avoidant coping (e.g., avoiding emotions) was

related to more anxiety and depression”

Kent de Gray, et al, (2018) Social support is usually divided into two domains, one is

perceived support or people’s subjective construal of the support they believe to be available to

them, and received support, which is the support that is given by other people. These supports

can be in different forms. Emotional support includes expression of other people’s affection,

empathy, care, etc. Instrumental support is the financial and physical assistance, such as money

and labor. Informational support which are the advice, suggestions, and information that they

receive.

Personality Traits

Diener, E. & Lucas, R.E. (2018), “Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic

patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Personality traits imply consistency and stability---

someone who scores high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in

different situations and over time.” “The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-

Factor Model. This system includes five broad traits that can be remembered with the acronym

OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.”