Wellbeing of Level 3 students from the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care and the School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport: The importance of their work and family
posted on 2023-11-08, 11:31authored byPhilippa Waterhouse, Rajvinder Samra, Mathijs Lucassen
A key priority at all organisational levels of The Open University (OU) is supporting and enabling student success. Connected to this is supporting student mental wellbeing. A distinct feature of the OU, in comparison to other higher education institutions in the United Kingdom (UK), is that it offers flexible and independent distance-based learning. Consequently, the OU attracts more mature students who have a range of personal commitments and responsibilities that are on-going during their studies.
The aims of this scholarship project were threefold:
a) To quantitatively examine student wellbeing using an established measure of distress with acceptable psychometric properties (DASS-21);
b) To consider the association of student (i) wellbeing, and (ii) satisfaction with their education experience at the OU, in relation to students’ work and family commitments, as well as their experience of role conflict and role facilitation; and,
c) To explore students’ perceptions of institutional support, as well as to elucidate students’ strategies used for coping.