Psychological well-being among university students: Problem solving, career-decision-making attitudes, and program commitment.

Abstract

University administrators are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the university experience on students' psychological well-being. Bivariate research studies have suggested that social problem solving orientation, career-decision-malting attitudes, and program commitment may be related to student's psychological well-being. Their role in psychological well-being, as suggested by the literature, may not have been investigated completely. For example, these antecedent variables may change as a function of years of university experience. Also, there may be structural relationships between these variables that are better explained by a mediational model. Accordingly, the goals of this study are threefold. First, the relationships among students' social problem solving orientation, career-decision-making attitudes, university program commitment and psychological well-being were investigated. Second, the role of years of university experience relative to social problem solving orientation and career-decision-making attitudes was explored. Third, a path analytic design was proposed to identify potential mediating relationships among the variables related to psychological well-being. Participants included 394 students from the faculties of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa. The results confirmed that social problem solving orientation, career-decision-making attitudes, and university program commitment were all significantly positively correlated to students' psychological well-being. A one-way Anova and post-hoc analyses suggested that years of university experience was positively related to social problem solving orientation and career-decision-making attitudes. However, the hypothesized path model was not supported. Rather, the final cross-validated path design begins with years of university experience leading to social problem solving orientation and career-decision-making attitudes. Career-decision-making attitudes was, in turn, directly related to psychological well-being while social problem solving orientation's influence on psychological well-being was mediated by university program commitment and career-decision-making attitudes. These results point to two major implications. First, future research should adopt a multidimensional longitudinal strategy that takes into account the developmental sequence of variables related to students' psychological well-being. Second, university administrators, career counsellors, and academic advisors should consider ways to develop students' social problem solving orientation to facilitate their career-decision-making attitudes, program commitment, and psychological well-being.