Transitioning from high school to university life can be stressful. First year university students are increasingly facing various stress (e.g., academic, economic, romantic) and correspondingly physical and mental health problems (e.g., sleep problem, depression, anxiety). The issue might be even more problematic among international students, who frequently have to deal with other issues such as language barriers, discrimination, cultural shock, lack of proximal family support. What can freshmen do to better cope with their stress and perform well in school? How can we facilitate their acculturation and integration with the Canadian society and culture? We would like to examine various daily experiences, feelings, and activities among first year Canadian and international students to identify risk and protective factors in these daily processes.
With the support of China Institute at University of Alberta as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, we recruited about 300 freshmen during their first semester of university, who completed a month-long daily diary study in Fall 2019. We followed a subset of the participants in Spring 2022 for another month-long daily diary study when they were finishing their junior year, as well as another 6-month follow-up when they were in senior year with the support of Killam Research Fund. A subset of participants also participated in EEG experiments and various cognitive tasks in the lab (in collaboration with Dr. Kyle Nash in the Department of Psychology at University of Alberta), with the support of the University of Alberta Office of Vice-President Research and Innovation as well as Alberta Innovates.
We have concluded the data collection for this study and are NOT recruiting any new participants for this study anymore. Our research team has been busily analyzing collected data, publishing findings, and disseminating knowledge.
Papers from this project
*Li, K., #Cooke, E. M., & Zheng, Y. (2025). Dynamic links between daily anxiety symptoms and young adults’ daily well-being. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 38(3), 349–364.
*Zheng, H., & Zheng, Y. (2024). Understanding the within- and between-person structure of daily psychopathology among adolescents and young adults. Assessment.
*Zheng, H., & Zheng, Y. (2024). Daily links between leisure activities, stress, and well-being during the transition to university. Applied Developmental Science, 28(4), 580–595.
**Wu, Y., #Xu, J., Shen, Y., Wang, Y., & Zheng, Y. (2024). Daily agreeableness and acculturation processes in ethnic/racial minority freshmen: The role of inter-ethnic contact and perceived discrimination. Journal of Personality, 92(5), 1299–1314.
#Cooke, E. M., Schuurman, N. K., & Zheng, Y. (2022). Examining the within- and between-person structure of a short form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule: A multilevel and dynamic approach. Psychological Assessment, 34(12), 1126–1137.