Offer pre-arrival materials and self-evaluation paired with developmental exercises, plus peer mentoring, to foster adaptive traits and social support before students arrive on campus¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (5 for) · 1 study (1 review), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Drawing on the PHABS-PSS framework, the review recommends that practitioners ensure students have or are developing a social support structure on arrival, and foster key adaptive traits and skills such as "developing positive coping strategies, conscientiousness, and positive attitudes towards help seeking". Because evidence for curriculum-embedded interventions is limited, interventions should be timed before students arrive: universities could offer materials for incoming students to review during the gap between accepting an offer and course start, revisited during induction. Self-evaluation exercises should identify strengths and areas for development but must be paired with developmental exercises to avoid fixed mindsets, and peer mentoring from more senior students can leverage social support and support acclimation.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Self-evaluation exercises must be paired with developmental exercises to ensure students do not develop fixed mindsets about their strengths

Constraints¶

• Given limited evidence for curriculum-embedded interventions (Upsher et al., 2022), the authors favour pre-arrival timing; institutional differences should be acknowledged when assessing even person-centred interventions

Target Learners¶

• incoming traditional first-year university students, during the period between accepting an offer and arriving on campus

Target Learning Goals¶

• psychosocial transition success: social support building, positive coping, conscientiousness, positive help-seeking attitudes, and acclimation to university

Affordances¶

• Phabs Pss Framework

Claims¶

• A systematic review of 32 longitudinal studies identified 96 personal risk and protective factors for psychosocial transition success, consolidated into 16 salient elements across five higher-order domains [+W]
• Adjustment variables show the largest coefficients of any factor domain but are typically measured after arrival, limiting their use for designing pre-transition interventions [+W]
• Most retained studies lack pre-university baselines, with only five of 32 taking a baseline before students started university, limiting understanding of pre-transition processes [+W]
• Most extracted associations are small: 219 of nearly 500 coefficients fall below a medium effect size, with conscientiousness–academic adjustment (.64) the largest [+W]
• Positive coping styles show larger coefficients than negative coping styles, suggesting improving positive coping strategies may be more beneficial than minimising negative ones [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Ball, I., Banerjee, M., Holliman, A., & Tyndall, I. (2025). Investigating Success in the Transition to University: A Systematic Review of Personal Risk and Protective Factors Influencing Psychosocial Success. https://osf.io/vxu5q?view_only=ee23e20f57c54891b842c92b7a4858de