The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 53

Perceived Social Support and Roommate Status

predictor of loneliness (seniors reported more
loneliness than ﬁrst-year students) before
roommate status was added to the analyses.
After roommate status was added, classiﬁcation (e.g., junior, senior) was no longer a signiﬁcant predictor. A causal inference cannot
be implied from these ﬁndings, but it is possible that, regardless of year in college, it is important that students have contact with fellow
classmates to stave off loneliness.
Finally, the more social support that students reported from families, the more likely
they were to be lonely. On the surface, this
ﬁnding seems counterintuitive, as one would
think that the more social support a student
receives, the less likely they are to be lonely.
However, it is possible that students who
receive large amounts of social support from
family members who live out of town feel
alone because they are not able to interact with
them face to face. It also may be likely that
these students go home during the weekends
to the place they receive social support and do
not build social connections with students on
campus. It should be noted that these ﬁndings
are speciﬁc to the study sample but may not
hold true for students from backgrounds dissimilar to those of the sample population.

Limitations
Though we feel this study has valuable information that can be utilized by those who work
with students living in campus housing, there
are some limitations. Speciﬁcally, this survey
was conducted on one campus in the Midwest.
As a result, it could be that the results are speciﬁc to this campus, though the sample is representative of the larger campus population.
There were disproportionate numbers of

The major implication of this
study is that students who
come to campus and make
connections are less lonely
than students who do not. It is
probable that students initially
lean on their parents and
family for social support and
slowly transition to friends
and signiﬁcant others as they
become part of the college
atmosphere.

females and Caucasian students in this study.
The demographics of the population at the university where the sample was taken are similar
to that of the sample from which this data was
taken. This should be taken into consideration
when interpreting these results for college
students around the U.S. Speciﬁcally, studies
focused more largely on males would be beneﬁcial, as the current sample population was
largely female (74%). It is possible that loneliness, social support, and roommate interactions may exhibit differently in other cultures.

Implications
The major implication of this study is that
students who come to campus and make connections are less lonely than students who do
not. It is probable that students initially lean
on their parents and family for social support

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

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