Psychological security in Chinese college students during 2006-2019: The influence of social change on the declining trend

Abstract

Background: As a key indicator to measure the mental health status, psychological security level of Chinese college students and its changes over time are of great value to examine.

Methods: A cross-temporal meta-analysis was performed using papers that measured the psychological security level of Chinese college students using the Security Questionnaire between 2006 and 2019. In addition, a time lag analysis was conducted to define whether the selected macro social indicators can explain the changes in the psychological security level.

Results: A total of 58 papers involving 28,352 Chinese college students were included in the final sample. The results revealed that scores of psychological security and its two factors were significantly negatively correlated with the year. Scores of psychological security and its two factors were significantly associated with five social indicators of economic condition (residents' consumption level), social connectedness (divorce rate, urbanization level) and overall threat (college enrollment rate, crime rate), suggesting that social change may account for the decline in psychological security level of Chinese college students.

Limitations: The underlying mechanism is only discussed at a theoretical level. Thus, future studies can collect the relating empirical evidence to test the proposed theoretical model.

Conclusions: Our study revealed a decreasing trend of Chinese college students' psychological security level across time, which was associated with macro-social changes in diverse areas. In addition, combined with the corresponding macro-social indicators, a three-dimensional theoretical framework is proposed to explain the psychological security for college students as a group.

Keywords: Birth cohort; China; College students; Cross-temporal meta-analysis; Psychological security; Social change.