Graduation Year
2026
Degree Name
Master of Public Health
Department
Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies
Document Type
Capstone
First Advisor
Marybec Griffin
Abstract
Anxiety is prevalent among college students and can have a huge impact on academic performance as well as overall wellbeing. Past research has been conducted on the relationship between college generational status and anxiety. College generational status refers to whether you are a continuing-generation student (at least one of your parents or guardians went to college) or first generation (neither parent nor guardian went to college). In the current study, 56 college students from the United States were asked to complete an anonymous survey online. The sample included 21 first generation students and 35 continuing-generation students. Each student was asked about their demographics, their experience in college, and whether they have an anxiety diagnosis. Contrary to my hypothesis, I did not find a statistically significant relationship between college generational status and anxiety. However, there was an association between anxiety and three factors: seeking mental health support, financial stress, and GAD-7 rankings. Although there was no significance, there was a trend between satisfaction with college experience and anxiety. These findings suggest that a larger sample size may be needed to truly assess the relationship between college generational status and anxiety.