The Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 1 - 33

Place Identity and Student Flourishing

. . . students who have the freedom
to create a room that reflects their
desires may benefit from the sense of
autonomy such a setting provides.

The outcome variables for this analysis were
drawn from the Mental Health Continuum
Short Form (MHC-SF; Keyes, 2002, 2007),
which assesses positive mental health across
three different dimensions: emotional, social,
and psychological. Participants indicated how
frequently they had experienced a series of feelings over the previous month, on a 0-5 scale
ranging from never to every day. The emotional
flourishing measure consisted of three items,
including " interested in life " and " satisfied in
life " (α = .90); the social flourishing measure
consisted of five items, including " you had
something important to contribute to society "
and " you belonged to a community " (α = .80);
and the psychological flourishing measure
consisted of seven items, including " you liked
most parts of your personality " and " you had
experiences that challenged you to grow and
become a better person " (α = .86).  Three
scales were used to measure participants on
the hypothesized mediating variables: (a) the
short version of the Self-Regulation Questionnaire (Carey et al., 2004), a 31-item measure
of one's ability to regulate behavior to achieve
desired outcomes (α = .90); (b) the 5-item
authorship/self-congruence subscale of the
Index of Autonomous Functioning (Weinstein et al., 2012), which measures the belief
that one's behaviors are authentic and reflective of their own desires (α = .89); and (c) the

20-item Positive Affect and Negative Affect
Schedule (Watson et al., 1988), assessing the
participants' frequency of experiencing both
positive (α = .93) and negative (α = .84) emotional states. Finally, participants completed the
Big Five Inventory (John et al., 1991), which provides a measure of extraversion (α  = .89), agreeableness (α = .79), conscientiousness (α = .76),
neuroticism (α = .82), and openness (α = .72).
These traits were included in this study to
function as covariates in the analysis, in order
to control for the effects of stable personality
factors.

. . . the presence of physical spaces
on campus representative of a
student's ethnic or religious identity
impacts feelings of belongingness
and engagement.

RESULTS
Means, standard deviations, and zero-order
correlations for measured constructs are
shown in Table 2. Place identity related to
one's residence was positively correlated with
self-reported autonomy, self-regulatory ability,
and positive affect. Attachment to the room,
on the other hand, was only associated with
higher levels of autonomy. The only form of
well-being with a statistically significant relationship with place identity was psychological.
Place attachment was not associated with any
of the forms of well-being.
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Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 1
