ABSTRACT
Homesick disposition, an individual’s expectation about becoming homesick in the future, has been identified as an important predictor of homesickness. Homesick disposition can be detected and measured even before the separation from home has taken place, making it particularly relevant to understanding feelings and perceptions of rural school students who have yet to relocate and transition to university. A timely detection of homesickness may facilitate prevention strategies for students to feel more confident about going to university. Based on the theory of homesickness , this study uses a quantitative approach with a sample of 620 Australian rural students to examine the relationship between homesick disposition and some factors that have been discussed as its likely predictors in rural students, such as perceptions of control over the decision of transitioning to university, the levels of information managed about university, and the support students perceive they have from their social capital. Results show that rural students’ levels of perceptions of control and social capital are important predictors of homesick disposition.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Declarations
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
The authors did not have any conflict of interest in this research. This study was supported by the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program under Grant HEP1600099. All the participants have provided their informed consent to participate in this study.