Does college student well-being matter?

Research Publication
Written By Steven Zhou

Over the past few years, higher education has grown increasingly attuned to the importance of student well-being. Universities have launched wellness initiatives, poured resources into mental health services, and conducted climate surveys to better understand what students are going through. But for all the enthusiasm, one big question remains: What does student well-being actually predict?

That’s the question we explored in a new research publication, College Student Well-Being: Explaining Academic and Behavioral Outcomes from a Representative College Student Sample, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. This project was a special one, not only because it tackles a big gap in the research, but also because of the incredible collaborators and infrastructure that made it possible.

Collaboration Opportunities with Institutional Data Offices

I was fortunate to work with wonderful collaborators at Purdue University, particularly the Institutional Data Analytics + Assessment (IDA+A) team (I served as their Survey & Measurement Methods Lead from 2022-2023). Their office manages large-scale survey administration, institutional records, and everything in between. In this case, we were able to draw from an unusually rich dataset that combined over 5,000 student survey responses with anonymized administrative records.

That might sound dry, but I promise, it’s not — it’s a wealth of resources that I hope future scholars will find collaboration opportunities with. The IDA+A team helped us link self-reported well-being to actual, behavioral indicators of student engagement: metrics like attendance at classes, time spent in academic buildings, number of meal swipes used, involvement in student organizations, and GPA. All of this data was collected across two semesters, giving us a rare glimpse into the daily lives of thousands of students.

And here’s what we found…

A Holistic Measure of Campus Well-Being

First, we developed and validated a new assessment tool to measure college student well-being. Drawing from the “Steps to Leaps” framework originally proposed by McCuskey and Zhang (2021), we organized 49 items across five themes:

  • Subjective Well-Being (positive and negative affect)

  • Grit (passion, persistence, and resilience)

  • Purpose & Meaning

  • Relationships (prosocial behavior, trust, diversity experiences)

  • Leadership

We tested the structure and reliability of these five themes using both confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Each theme held up quite well psychometrically, and ESEM revealed nuances that traditional CFA might have missed (especially the tight overlap between grit and purpose).

From Feelings to Behaviors

Here’s where things got exciting.

💡 Self-reported well-being predicted real student behaviors.

Students who scored higher on grit and positive affect, for example, were more likely to attend classes, use their meal plans, and report higher GPAs. Purpose and leadership were also associated with engagement, though to a slightly lesser degree. Importantly, these were not just correlations with perceptions of success; we used objective administrative records to track metrics like course attendance and involvement in student orgs.

💡 Well-being even predicted retention.

In a post-hoc logistic regression, we found that two well-being dimensions (purpose and prosocial relationships) significantly predicted whether students re-enrolled the following semester. That is, students who felt a sense of purpose and who helped others were more likely to stay in college. These findings offer promising insights for administrators aiming to improve retention, especially in the wake of COVID-era enrollment drops.

Why This Matters

There are two big takeaways here.

First, student well-being matters. Not just as an end in itself, but also as a predictor of key academic and behavioral outcomes. Too often, well-being is treated as fluffy or immeasurable. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that shows how well-being can in fact predict metrics that administrators care about like GPA, attendance, and campus involvement. This should be encouraging for student affairs professionals and university leadership alike.

Second, researchers should partner more with institutional data offices. The richness of this project was only possible because of the collaboration with Purdue’s IDA+A team. Institutional data is often underutilized in social science research, either because of access limitations or because we don’t think to look there. But the possibilities are huge. When anonymized appropriately and linked with care, these datasets can offer powerful insights into how students experience and navigate college. I hope our study encourages more researchers to explore these partnerships.

What’s Next?

This study is just the beginning. We need more investigations of how well-being affects long-term academic success and career outcomes. We also need to think more critically about how we define well-being — what dimensions are most meaningful, how they develop over time, and how they might differ across student populations.

For now, I’m grateful for this opportunity to shine a light on how self-reported well-being is tied to student success, and to share a small glimpse of what’s possible when researchers and institutional data teams work together.

You can read the full paper here:

📄 College Student Well-Being: Explaining Academic and Behavioral Outcomes

Steven Zhou