Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 48, No. 2 - 15

Thriving students experience high levels of functioning in three areas
that contribute to success and persistence: academic engagement and
performance, interpersonal relationships, and intrapersonal well-being.
Although some recent research (Eidum et al., 2020) has focused on thriving outcomes
in LLCs, there is a lack of research related to interactions for LLC students and how
such interactions influence thriving.
COLLEGE STUDENT THRIVING
From Tinto's (1975) seminal work, studying the social and academic domains of students'
lives has become the status quo for understanding their success. This traditional
approach can be supplemented with a more holistic one: the concept of thriving
(Schreiner, 2010a; Schreiner, Pothoven, et al., 2009). Thriving students experience
high levels of functioning in three areas that contribute to success and persistence: academic
engagement and performance, interpersonal relationships, and intrapersonal
well-being (Schreiner, McIntosh, et al., 2009). Essentially, students who thrive are fully
engaged in the college endeavor: intellectually, socially, and emotionally (Schreiner,
2010a).
The thriving construct contains five unique factors that represent these domains:
academic determination, engaged learning, social connectedness, diverse citizenship,
and positive perspective. Campus residential settings such as LLCs are strategically
designed to encourage relationship building and are therefore primed to explore the
ways students interact and thrive. This quantitative study focused on how the different
types of interactions LLC students have with different constituents can impact these
five factors of thriving. Further, by focusing on a sample of non-first-year students, we
were able to assess specifically what interactions most strongly influence thriving for
sophomore, junior, and senior students.
METHODS
A quantitative approach was utilized to address the following research question: How
do academic, social, and deeper life interactions with peers, faculty, and staff contribute
to thriving for sophomore, junior, and senior LLC students? Two instruments were
utilized for this study: the Academic, Social, and Deeper Life Interactions Instrument
(Sriram, Weintraub, et al., 2020) and the Thriving Quotient (Schreiner, McIntosh, et al.,
2009). Both instruments have demonstrated validity and reliability and have been
included in multiple studies with different populations (e.g., Beckowski & Gebauer,
2018; McIntosh, 2015; Schreiner, 2014; Sriram & McLevain, 2016; Sriram, Weintraub,
et al., 2020).
Sample and Data Collection
This study included data from undergraduate students residing in LLCs during the fall
of 2019. Data were collected from eight campuses across four states in the southeastern
region of the U.S. through a survey research design. Based on Carnegie classifiVolume
48, No. 2 * 2022 15

Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 48, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 48, No. 2