Research On The Effect Of College Students’ Academic Social Comparison On Their Development

Academic social comparison has an important influence on college students’development. For college students, academic social comparison is an important aspectof social comparison. Furthermore, Academic social comparison has an importantinfluence on college students’ self-concept, academic performance, and subjective well-being. The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between above variables,and put forward reasonable suggestions, in order to promote the development of collegestudents’ physical and mental health.Based on the past questionnaire, combining with literature analysis and interviewsurvey, we revise the academic social comparison features questionnaire of collegestudents. And then we survey the characteristics of college students’ academic socialcomparison. Through comparing the differences between students from academicallyselective class and nonselective class, to test and verify Big Fish Little Pond Effect inChinese university. Through correlation analysis and regression analysis, we exploresthe relationship among academic social comparison, self-concept, academicperformance, and subjective well-being. The results are as follows:1. The revised college students academic social comparison features questionnaire isdivided into five factors,respectively named as positive and uplifting, downwardcomparison,parallel comparison,self negative and comparison orientation.The reliabilityand validity of the questionnaire are very well.The five factor model has a good fitindex.This questionnaire can be an effective tool used to measure college students’academic social comparison.2. The research on college students’ academic social comparison characteristics foundthat the average of college students’ academic social comparison is in the middle level. The factor of maximum mean is positive and uplifting, and the factor of minimum meanis downward comparison. Analysis of variance found academic social comparison existssignificant differences among grades, academic performance, class type, and whether asa student cadre.3. The differences analysis between students from academically selective class andnonselective class found that Big Fish Little Pond Effect also exists in ChineseUniversity. In other words, in the aspect of academic self concept, the scores of studentsfrom academically selective class is significantly lower than that of students fromnonselective class. However, in the aspect of nonacademic self-concept, the situation isjust the opposite.4. Regression analysis showed that college students’ academic social comparison hasa significant predictive effect on their self-concept, academic performance andsubjective well-being.5. The mediating effect found that academic social comparison acts as theintermediary role between the class type and self-concept.