College Student Well-Being: Explaining Academic and Behavioral Outcomes from a Representative College Student Sample

Abstract

Recently, positive psychology has focused on measuring and improving college student well-being as a means of combatting growing concerns over student well-being (e.g., rising mental health challenges). Moreover, student well-being should be considered holistically, incorporating a range of measures beyond subjective well-being (SWB) to include aspects of relationships, purpose, and grit. In the present study, we use a novel holistic measure of student well-being, applied to two large samples of students to test its psychometric properties and assess predictive validity of academic and behavioral outcomes (e.g., grades, attendance at courses, student organization involvement). Well-being modestly predicted grades, course attendance, time spent in academic buildings, and student organization involvement. Relative importance analysis found that the grit theme in the well-being measure was the most important, followed by positive and negative SWB.