Sense of Community and Personality Determining In-session Psychological Well-being of off-campus Resident students of a Tertiary Institution in Lagos State

Tertiary institutions play critical roles in shaping the future of students. During school sessions, students experience challenges associated with their studentship such as academic pressures, social adjustments and psychological stressors. These challenges become more profound for off-campus resident students who shuttle to and from the campus daily, and experience lack of social interaction characteristic of on-campus living arrangement. The psychological well-being of these students may be in doubt. This study explores sense of community and personality traits as determinants of in-session psychological well-being of off-campus resident students. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted to obtain data across diverse characteristics of off-campus resident students. Therefore, the population under review was undergraduate students at Lagos State University in the district of Ojo, Lagos state Nigeria where at the time of the study, all students resided outside the university campus. The participants consisted of one hundred and ninety-three (193, 48.3%) males and two hundred and seven (207, 51.8%) females selected through convenience sampling method. The age of the participants indicated that thirty-five (8.8%) were aged 16 and 17 years, one hundred and seventy-seven were aged 18-21 years (44.3%), one hundred and fifty-five (37.8%) were aged 22-25 years and thirty-seven (9.3%) were aged 26 + years. Participants who reported high score on agreeableness and neuroticism reported significant in-session psychological well-being (β = .731, p < .01; β = .327, p < .01 respectively). Sense of community did not predict students' in-session psychological well-being (β = .102, p > .05). These results have implication on intervention strategies and planning of student’s welfare by management of tertiary institutions who are currently embroiled by provision of student’s residents and ultimately the well-being of students.