COLLEGE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AS A FUNCTION OF RESIDENCE: A RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Disagreement is present in the literature in relation to the impact of residence on the academic performance of college and university students. Almost all studies reported in the literature report on investigations of first year collegiate experiences. Some of the reported studies investigated narrowly defined segments of student populations, and many failed to assess intervening variables such as academic ability.
Brody (1988, pp. 347 359) found that early entry freshmen who commuted to classes performed at a higher academic level than did students who lived on campus. Early entry students, however, are younger (at times substantially so) than the typical first year college student. Thus, it would not be prudent to generalize this finding to the broader first year collegiate population.
Schroeder and Griffin (1976, pp. 159 161) found that first year students living on campus performed better academically than did commuter students. The resident student sample, however, was comprised of students enrolled in an engineering education program who were housed in an on campus residence hall specifically dedicated to engineering students. Again, therefore, it would not be prudent to generalize this finding to the broader first year collegiate population.
A wide variety of factors hold the potential to affect the academic performance of first year students. These factors include academic ability, the level of emotional development, the
ability to cope with pressure, the ability to adapt to new environments, and so forth. These factors frequently interact with one another to produce social behaviors, such as the excessive consumption of alcohol or a failure to become socialized into the campus community, that further affect academic performance. Student residence types can further affect the direction of such behaviors. Students living on...