Jade Kline

In today's society, students have multiple things they stress and worry about. Additionally, there is a rise of anxiety and depression among students over the past few years. Being aware of the extent and the domains in which students worry is beneficial to student affairs practitioners as well as higher education staff. Assessing the construct of worry among students can all inform professionals on ways to support student success and develop intentional programs to lessen the amount students worry. When conducting my literature review for this poster presentation, I am going to focus on analyzing the Student Worry Scale (SWS) which is a questionnaire that was developed to measure the construct of worry among college students. This questionnaire focuses on six different domains which contribute to worry among students: financial-related concerns, significant other’s well-being, social adequacy concerns, academic concerns, and general anxiety symptoms. One area of focus is with academic concerns. If academic advisors were aware of trends in worry related to academic concerns, these staff could develop interventions with could lessen academic worry. Decreasing the amount of academic worry could result in higher grades and academic student success. In my poster presentation, I plan on defining the construct of worry, addressing how worry can be measured/assessed, as well as the practical implication for higher education institutions and staff.

Jade Kline is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Research and Evaluation program at Virginia Tech. She has broad interests in student affairs assessment, data informed decision making, and quantitative research. Jade holds a M.S. Ed. from Old Dominion University and a B.B.A. in Business Administration and Management from Christopher Newport University.