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Attending college provides young adults with a major shift in environment from high school where many students are used to living at home with their parents or guardians. Students experience a newfound freedom once beginning their freshman year, especially if living in on-campus housing. Freshmen are known to gain weight during this transitory period, and this has been partially attributed to changes in eating behaviors, which makes this a population of concern. College freshmen have significant autonomy over their food choices if not living at home, due to not having parents or guardians present. In the transition to college, freshmen are able to adopt new habits, healthy or unhealthy, which could make a large impact on their health habits for the rest of their lives; this is why the freshman population is an area of concern. RESULTS: None of the relationships between social connectedness and FF consumption were found to be statistically significant. Social connectedness was not significantly related to cross-sectional FF intake at the two different phases, or longitudinally between the two phases, even after adjustments were made. Additionally, there were no gender differences present in FF consumption or social connectedness at either phase. CONCLUSION: The lack of significant findings suggest that social connectedness might not be a reason college freshmen consume FF. Students might eat with others due to the convenience of living closely to them rather than as a means to socialize. Also, factors such as time constraints and cost might have played a larger role in why students consumed FF. Future research could involve similar studies using shorter questionnaires more tailored to eating behaviors, with more detailed measures of FF consumption (e.g. What specific FF meals did you consume?) and for a longer duration of time, to allow students to become more situated in their environment and have a better knowledge of all their food options. This study was an important contribution to the sparsely researched topic of social connectedness with a large and diverse sample studied longitudinally. It was also the only study of its kind to be performed on the college population, and had potential for future health implications in obesity and chronic conditions such as hypertension and type II diabetes. Further research is warranted to evaluate the relationship between social connectedness and other eating behaviors.
ContributorsBaca, Rachel (Author) / Bruening, Meg (Thesis director) / Brennhofer, Stephanie (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
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Human beings are social creatures and need social connections to thrive in society. I observed low social connectedness amongst the students with disabilities in my high school and wanted to do more research on the cause of this occurrence. In my literary analysis and proposal, I highlight the effects social isolation and loneliness have on the well-being of people. While concluding that negative health effects come from low social connection, I researched the prevalence of low social connection amongst the disabled population and found that although low social connectedness can impact anyone, those with disabilities experience more low social connectedness than those without disabilities. I then analyzed ways in which low social connection can be addressed and focused on measuring social isolation and loneliness as indicators of low connectedness. I proposed a promising mentorship program intervention for my chosen population, young adults with disabilities, to help them increase social connection. This proposal may be adapted for use with any population. My goal for this program is to help increase social connection, promote societal support, and increase self-esteem and knowledge of their desired career and life skills as they transition into adult roles. Furthermore, I hope this paper may help spread awareness and get society to think of ways interventions to promote social connectedness can be implemented for people, like young adults with disabilities, who experience low social connectedness.
ContributorsBabatunde, Oreoluwa (Author) / Pohl, Janet (Thesis director) / Dykstra, LeAnn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation (Contributor)
Created2023-12
Description
This paper is a review of current scientific literature in the area of social isolation and health in both humans and nonhuman animals. Social isolation is an important subject today with social isolation generally increasing throughout human populations across the globe. Animals offer critical insights into certain mechanisms of social isolation. While assessing social isolation in animals is quite different in comparison to humans, the results of experimentation often show that animals share similar biological responses to social isolation with humans. Areas of social isolation research assessed in this paper include social isolation terms, methods and/or measurement, interventions (including environmental enrichment in animals), and biopathology. While some comparative studies exist that compare social isolation in humans and animals, this paper attempts to be a summative analysis of literature in multiple specific areas of social isolation research. The purpose of this literature review is to provide a perspective of first how social isolation is defined, of how it is measured, and finally the significance of both humans' and animals' biological responses to social isolation. Of these areas, comparisons between humans and animals offer critical insights for future social isolation research.
ContributorsKolodisner, Jude (Author) / Pohl, Janet (Thesis director) / Snyder-Mackler, Noah (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2022-12