The influence of biographical characteristics on emotional concerns of new first-year students at the University of Zululand
For students, transitioning from high school to university is a challenging period which in most cases brings about emotional concerns and mental health challenges. Such students not only have to grapple with stress related to academic load, but also have to take on more adult-like responsibilities without having yet mastered the skills and cognitive maturity of adulthood. This study investigates whether there is any influence of biographical factors on the emotional concerns of New First Year Students at University of Zululand It focuses on age, gender and sex as the biographical factors. A quantitative method was used and data was collected from 82 participants. Pearson’s product moment correlation was used to measure the relationship between demographic traits of New First Year Students and the emotional concerns while an independent student’s T test was performed to test for differences between sexes. This research identified areas of concern regarding their emotional challenges which align with previous studies discussed in the review of similar studies at other universities. Areas of emotional concern, according to the current study were identified as belonging emotions, positive affectivity, negative affectivity and pathological emotions. From the correlation analysis, the study revealed that age of the New First Year Students (NFYS) was not related to the three emotional constructs of negative affectivity, pathological and belonging. Nonetheless, there was statistically significant but very weak negative correlation between age and positive affectivity. The conclusion reached was that positive affectivity decreased with increase in the age of the NFYS even though it has a weak relationship. The 18-19 years old NFYS had higher ratings for positive affectivity emotions while the older than 19 years has lower positive affectivity emotions. The study also confirmed the nonexistence of any relationship between social economic status, and the emotional concerns of NFYS. An independent student ‘s t test analysis also confirmed there was no significant statistical difference in the emotional concerns between male and female NFYS. Finally, the results indicated that strong, positive and significant correlation existed between different emotional constructs. Pathological emotions were positively and strongly correlated with negative affectivity. Pathological emotions were also positively correlated with positive affectivity. Lastly, belonging emotions were positively, though weakly correlated with positive affectivity.
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