The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 52

William R. Henninger IV * Anastasia Osbeck * Elaine M. Eshbaugh * Christopher Madigan

When roommate status was added, all of
the other variables, with the exception of classiﬁcation, remained signiﬁcant, F(8, 307) =
44.32, p < .001, R2 = .54. In addition, students
without roommates were signiﬁcantly lonelier
than students with roommates. A signiﬁcant
proportion of additional variance in loneliness
(2%) was accounted for with the addition of
roommate status, F(1, 310) = 11.91, p < .01. In

Table 2
Regression of Loneliness on Covariates
and Predictor Variables (N = 316)
Variable

SE B

-1.90

1.00

-.08*

.11

.96

.01

Model 1
Gender (0 = male, 1 = female)
Sophomore
Junior

1.83

1.12

.07

Senior

6.66

1.97

.15**

Social supp-family

.50

.16

.20**

Social supp-friend

-1.59

.20

-.50**

Social supp-sig other

-1.02

.15

-.38**

-2.51

1.00

-.11*

-.24

.94

-.01

Model 2
Gender (0 = male, 1 = female)
Sophomore
Junior

1.16

.02

4.96

2.0

.10

Social supp-family

.57

.16

.23**

Social supp-friend

-1.51

.19

-.48**

Senior

Social supp-sig other

-1.10

.15

-.41**

If roommate

-3.46

.98

-.15**

Note: Model 1 R2 = .52
Model 2 R2 = .54; R2 ɣ = .02**
*p < .05
**p < .01

.589

order to determine if there was a signiﬁcant interaction for roommate status and gender, this
interaction term was then added to the model.
However, this addition did not account for
signiﬁcantly more variance than the previous
model, F(1, 309) = 1.84, p = .18.

DISCUSSION
Loneliness is experienced by many students
on college and university campuses throughout the U.S. (Wiseman et al., 2006). The ﬁndings in the present study begin to shed light
on the speciﬁc variables that contribute to
student loneliness and reveal that there are
several predictors. Social support from friends
and signiﬁcant others was the largest predictor of loneliness in this study; the more social
support a student reported from friends and
a signiﬁcant other, the less likely they were
to be lonely. In addition, those who reported
having a roommate were less likely to report
loneliness when compared to those without a
roommate. Previous research has demonstrated that those college students who are socially
engaged are less likely to report being lonely
(Lucas, Knowles, Gardner, Molden, & Jefferis,
2010). Though these students may not rely on
their roommates for social support (we did not
ask this in the survey), they are likely socially
engaged with them. Causation cannot be inferred from this analysis, but it is possible that
a roommate provides social engagement that
helps to mitigate loneliness.
The fact that males were more likely to be
lonely than their female counterparts was to be
expected, as previous research suggests that
men are less likely to engage in relationships
than their female counterparts. Interestingly,
only a "senior" classiﬁcation was a signiﬁcant

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