Approaching academic adjustment on multiple time scales

Abstract

AbstractIn educational research, the process of socioemotional adaptation is often examined using panel studies with repeated assessments across months or years. Intensive longitudinal designs (e.g., daily diaries or experience sampling methods) allow to target this process on a shorter time scale (e.g., from day to day or week to week). In this contribution, we demonstrate that these two approaches yield similar but not interchangeable information about the process of socioemotional adaptation in university students. Results of an intensive longitudinal study with 250 university students revealed (a) mean level differences in reported study satisfaction depending on the time frame of the assessment, (b) differential change in study satisfaction for daily vs. weekly ratings across seven weeks in one semester, and (c) the prognostic utility of repeated weekly assessments of study satisfaction for retrospective assessments of study satisfaction. Findings illustrate the benefit of combining panel studies with intensive longitudinal studies. Implications for the assessment of experiences, memories of experiences, and global self-beliefs are discussed.