Subjective Social Status and Social Comparisons with Peers at University and Associations with Sleep and Mental Health

Kocdemir, Gamze and Lunn, Judith and Perez Algorta, Guillermo (2025) Subjective Social Status and Social Comparisons with Peers at University and Associations with Sleep and Mental Health. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

University is frequently the first experience of living together with peers. Living with others might increase interactions but can impact subjective social status, sleep and mental health. At present, there is an absence of studies looking at changes in subjective social status and sleep-related characteristics during the first year of university, and how they could predict poor mental health outcomes in transition to university. This thesis aimed to understand the connections between subjective perceptions of social status compared to peers in the transition to university and sleep factors in predicting mental health. The thesis contains three studies that have used mixed methods to understand the connection between subjective social status with sleep and mental health. The data at two-time points were collected in the first study. At the beginning of university and again after six months and was conducted with the 2020 and 2021 entry cohorts. The results showed that a change towards a lower subjective social status from high school to university, poorer sleep quality, and a greater eveningness profile were all associated with poorer mental health outcomes in the first six months of university. The second study was a systematic review to see whether sleep and mental health interventions designed for university students addressed social factors such as social comparisons and perceived social status. The systematic review revealed that sleep and mental health interventions for university students did not specifically address factors such as social comparisons or subjective social status. The third study was developed from an additional exploratory analysis of data from the first study and the results of the systematic review. The third and final study involved the development and delivery of a pilot workshop about academic social comparisons and burnout to understand the experiences of university students and the necessity of increasing awareness on this topic. The workshop was further evaluated with thirteen small groups of students who reported it was highly relevant and that they valued learning different strategies on how to decrease adverse social comparisons. The workshop findings have also been developed into a toolkit to share with staff teams responsible for supporting student well-being in higher education settings. Overall, this work contributes to our understanding of how perceptions of social status and comparisons with our peers on academic performance are predictive of lower sleep quality and poorer mental health outcomes frequently reported in higher education student populations. Keywords: subjective social status, sleep, depression, anxiety