The Effects of Parental and Peer Attachment on University Adjustment among First-Year Undergraduate Students

DOI

10.2991/iciap-18.2019.58How to use a DOI?

Keywords

parental attachment, peer attachment, university adjustment, first-year students

Abstract

Entering university is a life transition for young adults who have to relocate away from their homes as well as deal with a wide range of problems and challenges in their new environment. This is especially the case for first-year undergraduate students. Past studies have found that perceived attachment to parents and peers primarily contributed to a successful transition among young adults enrolling in universities. Parental attachment provides a foundation for positive social relationships at university while social support from peers can help freshmen to quickly adapt to their new environment. Survey data using a purposive sampling technique were collected from 267 freshmen (average age = 20.81 years; 62.5% females) from four top public universities in Malaysia. First-year students who reported a higher level of parental attachment experienced a lower level of adjustment to university. This study also revealed that a higher level of peer attachment contributed to a greater level of adjustment to university. The results showed that peer attachment is the stronger predictor for university adjustment than parental attachment. The findings provided insights to interested parties such as policy makers in educational institutions in order to develop a better learning climate such as peer interactions or peer teaching programs to assist first-year students in making successful transitions to their life at university.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Su-wan Gan
AU  - Min-Shern Cheah
AU  - Keng-Leong Chen
AU  - Li-Xin Wong
PY  - 2019/08
DA  - 2019/08
TI  - The Effects of Parental and Peer Attachment on University Adjustment among First-Year Undergraduate Students
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Intervention and Applied Psychology (ICIAP 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 682
EP  - 691
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/iciap-18.2019.58
DO  - 10.2991/iciap-18.2019.58
ID  - Gan2019/08
ER  -