Academic and Social Engagement in University Students: Exploring Individual Differences and Relations with Personality and Daily Activities

Academic and social engagement can be used to better motivate students to get involved with their curricula and other campus activities. Engagement can help students stay in university and graduate, help make the university experience a pleasant one, and help get good grades and learn. Though there is much information in the literature about the many benefits of being engaged and the characteristics of students’ academic engagement, there is little about students’ social engagement in a non- learning context. Even more, many changes may occur during university years but there is little research on how academic and social engagement may change for university students. This dissertation presents a new measure that assesses social engagement in university students, it evaluates students’ academic and social engagement, and models how the two engagement types may change across two academic quarters as a function of students’ personality and daily activities. The findings show academic and social engagement are strongly related to each other. Academic engagement was predicted by conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, time students spent studying and going to class. Additionally, those students who started off high on extraversion and openness showed an increase in academic engagement over time, and those students who started off low on each of the two traits showed a decrease in academic engagement. Social engagement was best predicted by extraversion and openness to experience, as well as time spent on activities with friends, exercising, and housework (negative relation). This preliminary exploratory information can help with a better understanding of what engages and motivates students for future studies

Academic and Social Engagement in University Students: Exploring Individual Differences and Relations with Personality and Daily Activities

Academic and social engagement can be used to better motivate students to get involved with their curricula and other campus activities. Engagement can help students stay in university and graduate, help make the university experience a pleasant one, and help get good grades and learn. Though there is much information in the literature about the many benefits of being engaged and the characteristics of students’ academic engagement, there is little about students’ social engagement in a non- learning context. Even more, many changes may occur during university years but there is little research on how academic and social engagement may change for university students. This dissertation presents a new measure that assesses social engagement in university students, it evaluates students’ academic and social engagement, and models how the two engagement types may change across two academic quarters as a function of students’ personality and daily activities. The findings show academic and social engagement are strongly related to each other. Academic engagement was predicted by conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, time students spent studying and going to class. Additionally, those students who started off high on extraversion and openness showed an increase in academic engagement over time, and those students who started off low on each of the two traits showed a decrease in academic engagement. Social engagement was best predicted by extraversion and openness to experience, as well as time spent on activities with friends, exercising, and housework (negative relation). This preliminary exploratory information can help with a better understanding of what engages and motivates students for future studies

UCPC 2016

The University of California Personality Conference (UCPC) is a bi-annual conference designed to bring together faculty and graduate students across the UC system to discuss and present topics relating to personality psychology

Evaluation of a quality improvement intervention to reduce anastomotic leak following right colectomy (EAGLE): pragmatic, batched stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized trial in 64 countries

Background Anastomotic leak affects 8 per cent of patients after right colectomy with a 10-fold increased risk of postoperative death. The EAGLE study aimed to develop and test whether an international, standardized quality improvement intervention could reduce anastomotic leaks. Methods The internationally intended protocol, iteratively co-developed by a multistage Delphi process, comprised an online educational module introducing risk stratification, an intraoperative checklist, and harmonized surgical techniques. Clusters (hospital teams) were randomized to one of three arms with varied sequences of intervention/data collection by a derived stepped-wedge batch design (at least 18 hospital teams per batch). Patients were blinded to the study allocation. Low- and middle-income country enrolment was encouraged. The primary outcome (assessed by intention to treat) was anastomotic leak rate, and subgroup analyses by module completion (at least 80 per cent of surgeons, high engagement; less than 50 per cent, low engagement) were preplanned. Results A total 355 hospital teams registered, with 332 from 64 countries (39.2 per cent low and middle income) included in the final analysis. The online modules were completed by half of the surgeons (2143 of 4411). The primary analysis included 3039 of the 3268 patients recruited (206 patients had no anastomosis and 23 were lost to follow-up), with anastomotic leaks arising before and after the intervention in 10.1 and 9.6 per cent respectively (adjusted OR 0.87, 95 per cent c.i. 0.59 to 1.30; P = 0.498). The proportion of surgeons completing the educational modules was an influence: the leak rate decreased from 12.2 per cent (61 of 500) before intervention to 5.1 per cent (24 of 473) after intervention in high-engagement centres (adjusted OR 0.36, 0.20 to 0.64; P < 0.001), but this was not observed in low-engagement hospitals (8.3 per cent (59 of 714) and 13.8 per cent (61 of 443) respectively; adjusted OR 2.09, 1.31 to 3.31). Conclusion Completion of globally available digital training by engaged teams can alter anastomotic leak rates. Registration number: NCT04270721 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)