Background/Purpose Research on college students has produced information regarding fluctuating emotion and behavior. College students often experience stressors that may contribute to the development of negative well-being such as concentration difficulty, anxiety, and other psychiatric illnesses. It has been demonstrated that well-being is related to students' success in college, and therefore it is crucial to increase students' well-being on college campuses. The purpose of the study was to investigate how individual difference, social context, and activities contribute to well-being in daily lives college students.
Method This study employed the Experience Sampling Method developed by Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, and Prescott (1977). College students from a Midwestern university in the U.S. participated (N=62). During the study, participants received randomly timed text messages 7 times a day from 9:00am to 9:00pm for a week, and they completed a self-report form whenever they received messages from the researchers.
Analysis/Results ANOVA results showed that participants reported higher well-being in the following situations: (1) evenings than in the afternoons, (2) engaged in activities such as shopping, hanging out with friends, eating out, or attending games, (3) when they were at work or school than at home, (4) on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays than any other days of week, and (5) when they were doing activities with others.
Conclusions Study findings suggest that externalities such as social context, activities, times of the day/week, etc are important factors in student well-being. Hence college administrators can more effectively carry out intervention programs and implement policies to address subjective well being and ultimately, student success.
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