Investigating

Homesickness Among First-year University

Students: Relations with Social Connectedness
and Academic Engagement


Robert John V. Almocera
Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies, Philippines
[email protected]

Gail D. Conway
Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan, Philippines

Jerome A. Ouano
De La Salle University, Philippines


A number of university students in the Philippines come from distant places
of residence and often experience homesickness as they commence
university life. The current study investigated the relationship of
homesickness with academic engagement among freshman university
students and the relationship of social connectedness with homesickness.
In six universities in the Philippines, a survey was conducted among 304
freshman university students in their first two to three months of university
attendance. Results showed that social connectedness was negatively
associated the two dimensions of homesickness, and that homesickness
negatively predicted cognitive and affective engagement. Results are
discussed with emphasis on the function of social connectedness in
attenuating homesickness, the potential detriments of homesickness on
university students’ academic engagement, and the necessity of extending
school counseling programs to also include goals in addressing
homesickness and promoting social connectedness.

Keywords: Homesickness, Social connectedness, University students, Filipino


Going away from home for college is a natural course of action that
students decide on, but they may experience homesickness as a result.
Approximately 85% of Filipino high school students anticipate enrolling in
college while 95% of Filipino parents expect their high school children to
Philippine Journal of Counseling Psychology (2020), Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 61-80.
© Philippine Association for Counselor Education, Research, and Supervision (PACERS)
ISSN 1655-1702
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attend tertiary education (Asian Development Bank, 2019). Most major

universities in the Philippines are situated in urban centers (Commission
on Higher Education, 2019), and as a result of this, students move to urban
areas for the purpose of advancing their education (Quisumbing &
McNiven, 2006). An earlier report of Filipino students’ internal migration
shows that as much as 36% of the students come from rural areas outside
of the National Capital Region (Balatbat & Dahilig, 2016). On the other
hand, the number of Filipino students who relocate out of the country for
tertiary education is increasing every year (UNESCO, 2017).

While homesickness is commonly experienced by college students,
research has shown that homesickness is associated with negative
outcomes. Earlier investigations into college students’ experience of
homesickness suggest that adjustment to college is negatively affected
when first-year college students experience high levels of homesickness at
the start of the school year (English et al., 2017). Moreover, first-year
college students who experience homesickness tend to report
psychological distress and sleep difficulties (Biasi, et al., 2018), feelings of
dislike toward their environment, and negative emotions such as
loneliness, depression, and anger (Stroebe et al., 2015a).

Homesickness could manifest various emotional, cognitive, social, and
somatic indicators; it is even being closely correlated with other constructs
such as separation anxiety, grief, or depression (Stroebe et al., 2015a; van
Tilburg, 2005). Homesickness as a dual-process phenomenon of mini-grief
experience (Stroebe et al., 2015a; 2015b) entails experiencing challenges
in both the home and in a new place in which the challenges that a student
faces in one domain (i.e., separation from home) may exacerbate in the
other (i.e., university as a new place) and vice versa. Like grieving
individuals, homesick students experience a loss when they move away
and may pine for their homes. While they are now in a new place such as
the university they are now attending, these students oscillate between
addressing home-related concerns and school-related concerns, both of
which involve some form of maintaining or establishing social
relationships in each domain (Stroebe et al., 2015b). Those who are unable
to cope with these challenges may experience escalated difficulties.
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Social Connectedness and Homesickness

Fortunately, students possess factors that can help attenuate feelings
of homesickness so that positive youth development may occur. Such
factors include personality characteristics (Verschuur et al., 2003),
attachment security, self-directedness, social support (Stroebe et.al.,
2015a), parental education (Sun et al., 2016), extraversion (Stroebe et al.,
2015b), belongingness (Watt & Badger, 2009) and social connectedness
(Duru & Poyrazli, 2011). Among these factors, social connectedness ranks
high as indicated by empirical evidence on its ability to influence positive
psychological development (Lee et al., 2001).

Social connectedness is a sense of being intimate with the social world
and is a perception that one’s social environment is generally welcoming,
caring, trustworthy, and without feelings of threat towards the self (Lee &
Robbins, 1995; Thurber & Walton, 2012). The development of social
connectedness begins during childhood and persists until later in life
wherein all prior interpersonal experiences of individuals in connection to
their social world come together to create a holistic picture of their self and
their sense of connectedness (Lee et al., 2001). The manifestation of the
development of social connectedness is seen more during adolescence,
wherein a sense of maturity begins to unfold (Lee & Robbins, 1995).
Having secured positive proximal relationships with family members and
friends, maturing and socially connected adolescents open themselves to
an expanded world and to other people without feeling threatened.
However, those who grow up experiencing less positive interpersonal
experiences, such as being criticized harshly as well as being isolated from
others may manifest low social connectedness as adults (Lee et al., 2001).
They may struggle with feelings of disconnection, distance and isolation
from the world, and may fantasize about being somewhere else (Lee &
Robbins, 1995).

Low social connectedness can be problematic given that
connectedness can positively influence students’ cognitions as well as
emotions as they relate with their social environment (Duru & Poyrazli,
2011). Some evidence implies this connection: in a retrospective study of
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first-year college students, high social anxiety was found to predict less
developed social networks, which resulted in higher reports of
homesickness (e.g., Urani et al., 2003). Hence, college students who are
more socially connected possibly experience less homesickness because
they could utilize various strategies of requesting for social support,
including both direct requests to distal relationships (e.g., calling up loved
ones at home) and to proximal relationships (e.g., interacting with other
students). They may also utilize indirect strategies for requesting for social
support such as frequent trips back home, or care packages, etc. (Scharp et
al., 2016). The use of these strategies implies that socially connected
students have far more social resources to access when they start to feel
homesick, which in turn, may slow down the progression of homesickness.
Additionally, considering that homesickness is inversely associated with
social connectedness (Duru & Poyrazli, 2007; Kegel, 2009), students who
feel that the new school environment is welcoming, caring, and
trustworthy also feel less homesick (e.g., Watts & Badger, 2009).

Homesickness and Academic Engagement

Despite being a common reaction, homesickness can be vexing for
students who feel it intensely and it may bring about difficulties in
adjusting to university life. Consequently, not addressing homesickness
can only exacerbate students’ adjustment difficulties. Homesickness has
extensive ramifications such as anxiety, depression, insomnia,
gastrointestinal concerns (Biasi et al., 2018; Thurber & Walton, 2012),
Internet addiction (Ni et al., 2009), less social and academic satisfaction,
and difficulty in settling into college life (English et al., 2017). Even newly
formed social relationships within the school can be adversely affected
when first-year students experience homesickness (English et al., 2017).
These results are thought to be outcomes of students’ poor adjustment
resulting from homesickness.

Counseling interventions addressing homesickness tend to revolve
around issues related to psychological adjustment. For example, Thurber
and Walton (2012) mentioned that effective homesickness treatment
include advocating school friendships, provision of student orientation
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sessions at the start of the school year, facilitation of student involvement

in school activities, reframing students’ homesickness into a reflection of
their secured home attachment and encouraging students to take a
positive perspective of their schools. Such a focus may be a reflection of
social norms associated with homesickness in which students who
experience homesickness refrain from seeking social support from family
members due to beliefs that family members may not be able to
understand what they are experiencing, or may simply assume that
homesickness is an experience that they just need to “get over with”
(Scharp et al., 2016). Homesickness can also be perceived as a “socially
sanctioned” experience that may suppress the acknowledgement and
expression of feelings associated with homesickness, for fear of being
labeled as immature, less socially desirable, or less intelligent (Van Tilburg,
2005). Wanting to appear mature, ready to live their roles as university
students, and face the academic demands of being an undergraduate,
students who experience homesickness may appear to be not struggling
academically because their behavior may still show attempts of
engagement. The desire to appear mature is not unusual since research has
shown that psychosocial maturity among Asians, including Filipinos, tend
to continue developing as individuals progress well beyond their 20’s
(Icenogle et al., 2019).

However, homesickness has plenty of academic ramifications. For
example, it can lead to lower GPA (Sun et al., 2016) as students can become
less attentive to classes and have trouble concentrating (Burt, 1993).
Likewise, homesickness can lead to attrition as students who experience
homesickness may withdraw from their classes and opt to return home
(Sun et al., 2016). The significance of looking into the academic
consequences of homesickness is underscored in college, where a greater
degree of academic engagement is necessary considering the complexity of
the curriculum (Binfet & Passmore, 2016).

Academic engagement has a tripartite structure involving affective,
cognitive, and behavioral dimensions (Lam et al., 2014). Affective
engagement encompasses how students feel about learning and their
educational environment such as class boredom or interest, and school
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alienation or attachment. Cognitive engagement involves understanding a

material well, retaining information, and making meaningful connections
between the information and the real world, and behavioral engagement
is manifested through active participation in school activities as well as
persistence in classwork (Lam et al., 2014). Considering that academic
engagement predicts academic outcomes (Kuh et al., 2008), it is important
to investigate whether or not such academic engagement could be
negatively affected by homesickness.

College students who experience homesickness may not necessarily
show a lack of behavioral engagement because, as adolescents who are
exploring opportunities to grow into adulthood, they may not want to
appear immature (Van Tilburg, 2005) and unready for their roles as
university students. However, within themselves, the experience of
homesickness could make them lose their interest or make them feel
detached from the new learning environment, hence dampening their
affective engagement. They may also be preoccupied with thoughts of
home (Strobe et al., 2015a) which could prevent them from becoming
cognitively engaged.

The Current Study

Despite the importance of social connectedness to homesickness
implied through other related constructs (e.g., social anxiety, belongingness,
etc.), there is a lack of evidence of social connectedness as a protective
factor against homesickness. This lack of evidence needs to be addressed
given how strongly emphasized intergenerational bonds are between and
among Filipino parents, children, and even their relatives (Chen et al.,
2017). In a society where social support and living arrangements normally
include extended kin, homesickness due to relocation for university
attendance has to be looked into. Furthermore, given the conceptualization
of homesickness as a dual-process phenomenon, it is important to
investigate social connectedness as a common, non-domain-specific
protective factor against homesickness in both domains, as individuals
oscillate between and address problems in both domains.

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Moreover, as previously indicated, the literature providing evidence to

the effects of homesickness on college students primarily focus on
adjustment problems and academic performance. In light of some of the
conflicting results on academic performance (Burt, 1993; English, et al.,
2017; Sun, et al., 2016), and to address a gap in the nomological proximity
of homesickness to academic outcomes, academic engagement should be
investigated as an academic outcome more proximal to homesickness,
representing the underlying processes that predict academic performance.
Finally, there is a need to measure the different dimensions of engagement
as homesickness may have varying degrees of effect on the three
dimensions of engagement.

Given the gaps in the literature, the current study forwarded two
hypotheses. First, higher levels of social connectedness would account for
lower reported homesickness. Relevant to this assumption, college
students already possess some degree of social connectedness, and upon
entry to university, those who already have a relatively higher degree of
social connectedness may find themselves in a more advantaged position
than those who have lower social connectedness. They may employ this
sense of being in close relationship with the social world both at home and
in school in such a way that their interactions with individuals in their new
environment are more positive and supportive, thereby attenuating
homesickness.

Second, higher reported homesickness would account for lower
affective and cognitive engagement. Students who are homesick have
lower affective engagement given that one component of homesickness is
feelings of dislike (Stroebe et al., 2015a); they may also struggle with
cognitive engagement as this is relevant to cognitive processes of attention
and concentration (Fredricks & McColskey, 2012), which are said to
become problematic when there is intense homesickness. Additionally, the
researchers also hypothesized that homesickness would not be associated
with any change in behavioral engagement because college students tend
to appear socially mature and competent, thus maintaining behavioral
engagement (Icenogle et al., 2019; Scharp, et al., 2016; van Tilburg, 2005) in
spite of their experience of homesickness.
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Method

Participants

The study involved a sample of 304 first-year college students (male =
153 or 51.5%; female = 144 or 48.5%) from six universities in selected
provinces of Mindanao, Philippines, with ages ranging from 16 to 28 (M =
17.15, SD = 0.98). The students were in their first two to three months of
university attendance and had only graduated from high school in the last
school year. With permanent residences outside the city location of their
university, all of them were renting either dormitory spaces or boarding
houses, and were living with other students either unrelated to them (n =
226; 74.3%), their relatives (n = 50; 16.4%), or their siblings (n=28; 9.2%).
While 161 (52.9%) of them were able to go on quick home visits for five
times or less in the last two to three months, 124 (40.8%) others had done
so for more than five times, and 19 (6.3%) had not done so yet. Participants
completed a print questionnaire which was administered in batches of 15
to 40 individuals per administration. Debriefing information sheets were
given to them afterwards.

Measures

Homesickness. The two-factor Homesickness Scale (Archer et al., 1998)
was used to measure students’ experience of homesickness. The scale
consisted of 11 items on Disliking the University (e.g., I wish I’d never come
to university), and 12 out of 14 items on Attachment to the Home (e.g., I feel
as if I’ve left a part of me at home). The two items in the original scale that
were excluded from the current research were the items that cross-loaded
in the two factors as reported by Archer et al. (1998). The participants
responded to each item using a six-point scale from never true of me (1) to
always true of me (6). High scorers on either subscale are considered to
have experienced homesickness. CFA results of the two-factor scale as used
in the current study indicated acceptable fit (X2/df = 2.29; RMSEA = .07;
SRMR = .07; TLI = .90; CFI = .91). Internal consistency reliability of the two
subscales are α = .90 and α = .91, respectively.

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Social Connectedness. A 12-item social connectedness scale (Summers

et al., 2005) was used as a measure of a student’s sense of social
connectedness in school (e.g., I feel that I can share personal concerns with
other students). The participants responded to each item on a six-point scale
from never true of me (1) to always true of me (6). The computed internal
consistency reliability of the items is α = .87.

Academic Engagement. Students’ academic engagement was measured
using the three subscales of student engagement in school (Lam et al.,
2014). The items were adapted to fit them into university students’
context. Nine items comprised the Affective Engagement subscale (e.g., I
like what I’m learning in this university); 12 items for the Behavioral
Engagement subscale (e.g., When I run into a difficult homework problem, I
keep working at it until I think I’ve solved it); and 12 items for the subscale on
Cognitive Engagement (e.g., When learning new information, I try to put the
ideas in my own words). Participants answered every item using a six-point
scale from never true of me (1) to always true of me (6). CFA results of the
two-factor scale as used in the current study indicated acceptable fit (X2/df
= 1.74; RMSEA = .04; SRMR = .04; TLI = .90; CFI = .91). Internal consistency
reliability of the three subscales are α = .90, α = .89, and α = .88, respectively.

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics was performed to inspect the data across the
demographic characteristics of the participants and the study variables.
Inspection of Mahalanobis distances and of zero-order correlations were
performed prior to the multivariate analyses. Finally, in testing the
hypotheses, a multivariate regression analysis was performed.

Results

Results of descriptive analysis and zero-order correlations of the
variables are presented in Table 1. All variables except the dimensions of
homesickness and behavioral engagement are moderately correlated,
suggesting low multicollinearity among the variables (Mansfield & Helms,
1982).
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Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among the Variables

Study Variables M SD SC DL AT AE BE
Social Connectedness (SC) 3.26 0.96
Dislike (DL) 3.67 1.11 -.30 **
Attachment (AT) 4.49 0.89 -.45** .16**
Affective Engagement (AE) 3.46 1.24 .26** -.43** -.18**
Behavioral Engagement (BE) 3.46 0.91 .14 -.03 -.04
* .31
**
Cognitive Engagement (CE) 3.24 1.01 .47** -.43** -.19** .23** .22**
Note. *p < .01, **p < .001; n = 304


In relation to the first hypothesis on the relationship of social
connectedness with homesickness, results of multivariate regression
analysis as shown in Table 2 indicated that social connectedness accounted
for significant amounts of variance of both the dimensions of
homesickness. Specifically, social connectedness negatively predicted
disliking the university and attachment to the home. When students have
a sense of connectedness to their social world, they are less likely to harbor
negative feelings about the university, feel unsettled in the university, or be
preoccupied with the thought of home.

Table 2. Multivariate Regression Results for Social Connectedness Predicting
Homesickness

Dislike Attachment
Social Connectedness -.30*** -.45***
95% CI [-0.40, -0.19] [-0.56, -0.36]

F 28.70*** 77.46***
R2 .09 .20
Adjusted R2 .08 .20
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001


As for the second hypothesis on the relationship of homesickness with
academic engagement, the current study found that the dimensions of
homesickness were negatively associated with affective engagement and
with cognitive engagement (see Table 3). Specifically, disliking the university

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negatively predicted affective engagement and cognitive engagement.

Likewise, attachment to the home also negatively predicted affective
engagement and cognitive engagement. The variance inflation factor score
of 1.03 of the predictor variables suggested no apparent multicollinearity
issues (Midi & Bagheri, 2010).

Table 3. Multivariate Regression Results for Homesickness Predicting Academic
Engagement

Affective Behavioral Cognitive

Engagement Engagement Engagement
Dislike -.41*** -.02 -.41***
95% CI [-0.52, -0.31] [-0.14, 0.01] [-0.51, -.031]

Attachment -.19* -.04 -.13*
95% CI [-0.22, -0.02] [-0.15, 0.08] [-0.23, -0.02]

F 37.46*** 0.34 37.91***
R2 .20 .00 .20
Adjusted R2 .20 .00 .20
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001


Finally, while homesickness accounted for significant amounts of
variance of affective engagement and cognitive engagement, the results
also supported the hypothesis that homesickness does not explain
variances in behavioral engagement. Even when the dimensions of
homesickness were examined, the results did not show any predictive
relationship of disliking the university and attachment to the home with
behavioral engagement.

Discussion

Current literature on homesickness provides evidence of detrimental
effects on students’ adjustment and academic performance. This study
attempted to extend the body of knowledge by examining the negative
relationship of homesickness with different aspects of academic
engagement. As a phenomenon that primarily revolves around the
relational experiences in both the home and university settings, the current
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study has brought forward the potential of social connectedness as a

protective factor that may attenuate the experience of homesickness
among university students in terms of both the negative feelings towards
the university, as well as attachment to the home.

Social Connectedness and Homesickness

From the results of the current study, the negative association between
social connectedness and homesickness suggests the potential of social
connectedness in attenuating the experience of homesickness among first-
year university students who come from distant places of residence. As
previous studies have shown, homesickness can be attenuated by different
interpersonal factors, such as feelings of attachment security, social
support, and belongingness (Stroebe et al., 2015a; Watt & Badger, 2009;
Duru & Poyrazli, 2011). In the new school environment, students engage
in social interactions such as looking for support within the university,
calling the family back home, going home regularly, and so on (Scharp et
al., 2016).

Social connectedness as a protective factor has the function of reducing
the effects of stress associated with being away from home to attend
university, and of increasing the person’s ability to successfully wade
through the challenging time of adjustment in a new and bigger academic
environment (Hirai et al., 2015). University life presents novel adjustment
challenges to first-year students, challenges that these students may not
have the intrapersonal tools to efficiently address. In cases where students
may not be able to address these challenges, social connectedness may be
a resource that can encourage them to use positive reactions in dealing
with these challenges. For example, student-parent relationships that
manifest support, stability, and openness for the student were found to be
predictive of university students’ academic and social adjustment to
university life (Wintre & Yaffe, 2000). Additionally, the results of a study on
international students’ adjustment to American university life shows that
students who report high connectedness to their school community are
less susceptible to experience psychological distress over time (Hirai et al.,
2015). Moreover, there is evidence that suggests that social connectedness
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may reduce the risk of self-directed violence among secondary students

who live in high-risk communities (Kaminski et al., 2009). Similarly,
university students’ alcohol consumption suggests that lower social
connectedness is associated with higher alcohol consumption (Hunt &
Burns, 2017).

Social connectedness also includes stability and security in one’s
connection with the social world. Socially connected students who are in a
new social environment away from their homes use their social
connectedness as a resource for dealing with the new environment with
greater positivity and excitement for social connection instead of disliking
it and feeling regretful for being detached from their home environment.
This scenario is consistent with an earlier report that university students
who have established new connections with others in the university tend
to go home less often than those who have not (Jorgenson et al., 2018).
Individuals possessing a sense of social connectedness are trusting of social
interactions even in new environments, thus they integrate themselves
into new social environments rather than withdraw and return to their
previous safe spaces. Because socially connected individuals have more
secure and stable relationships, adolescents who possess social
connectedness are also able to utilize more strategies in developing
supportive and secure relationships at school that could attenuate the
effects of negative experiences including homesickness (Duru, 2008).
Moreover, socially connected students engage in academic help-seeking
behavior (Conway et al., 2018), experience more positive emotions and
less deactivating negative emotions in school, which may lead to better
academic performance (Lam et al., 2015).

Homesickness and Academic Engagement

As reported in the literature, homesickness influences students’
academic performance, engagement, and adjustment to college life (Biasi
et al., 2018; English et al., 2017; Thurber & Walton, 2012). Results of the
current study, however, extended previous findings by providing evidence
of how homesickness is associated with the different dimensions of
academic engagement.
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The negative relationships of homesickness with cognitive

engagement and affective engagement suggest potential detriments of
homesickness on first-year university students’ academic life. As reported
in the literature, homesickness is associated with poorer concentration on
tasks, as a result of intrusive and frequent thoughts of home as well as
bouts of absent-mindedness (Burt, 1993; Fisher & Hood, 1987; Thurber &
Walton, 2012). With regard to affective engagement, results of the current
study also find support in the literature. For example, students who
experienced homesickness reported that they were less adjusted (e.g., less
settled, lower academic and social satisfaction) over time (English et al.,
2017). Moreover, students who reported higher overall homesickness
experienced more unpleasant affect (e.g., worry, anger, and frustration) and
less pleasant affect (Nauta et al., 2019). Students who experience
homesickness may show signs of low affective engagement (e.g., boredom)
and cognitive engagement (e.g., lack of concentration), yet still be able to
perform tasks behaviorally (Ben-Eliyahu et al., 2018).

However, the absence of a significant relationship between
homesickness and behavioral engagement might suggest that indicators of
behavioral engagement (e.g., persistence, completing of tasks, regular
attendance, etc.) may not easily change with homesickness, as students
would usually do their best to appear fine, show behavioral indicators of
engagement, and even accomplish more measurable or discernable
academic outcomes. Their desire to appear mature and adjusted may
shroud the negative effects of homesickness, and thus, it may be
problematic if the investigation of the effects of homesickness is limited to
behavioral academic outcomes.

Implications on Counseling

Taken together, the results presented in the preceding sections provide
for implications for counseling practice, specifically addressing two key
points: social connectedness attenuating homesickness, and homesickness
compromising cognitive and affective engagement. First of all, counseling
programs that help new university students to successfully adjust to
university life may be extended to include interventions for students who
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may experience homesickness, especially that a huge percentage of

students in any given university in the Philippines is comprised of students
who come from distant places of residence and have very limited
opportunities to go home during the academic term or even interact
directly with people back home. Specifically, counseling programs may
start with acknowledging the prevalence of homesickness among students,
and address potential “social sanctioning” of homesickness such as the
assumption that homesickness is normal and will be “grown out of”
(Scharp, et al., 2016; van Tilburg, 2005). Moreover, since homesickness is
a phenomenon that involves both the home and a new place (i.e.,
university), and students can be expected to spend a significant amount of
time, effort, and resources in maintaining relationships, and addressing
concerns in both places, counseling programs may address how students
can adaptively oscillate between the two (Stroebe et al., 2015a).

Secondly, school programs geared towards addressing students’
experience of homesickness may need to pay attention to the students’
cognitive and affective engagement, as these aspects of academic
engagement often manifest the academic detriments of homesickness.
Counseling programs that aim to help students with homesickness may
look for ways to provide opportunities to develop social connectedness
among students who experience homesickness, and help these students
establish connections in the university, as social connectedness can
decrease the effect of loneliness on adjustment difficulties to university life
(Duru, 2008). Moreover, students who feel more socially connected may
not oscillate between the university and the home as frequently, reducing
the risk of absentmindedness and lack of concentration demanded by
learning tasks. Additionally, programs that aim to help students who
experience homesickness may consider addressing how students attempt
to resolve homesickness-related adjustment problems such as getting
used to new roles and responsibilities within the university or coping with
new challenges; successful resolution of school-related problems may
distract students from excessively dwelling on thoughts of home (Stroebe,
et al., 2015b).

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Limitations and Future Directions

Despite its contributions, the current study is not without limitations.
One potential limitation is the method through which the data were
collected via self-report questionnaires. Although self-reported data could
be used as valid measures of psychological constructs, data gathered from
other sources could address validity concerns, especially for measures of
academic engagement. Subsequently, due to the non-experimental nature
of the current research, no causal relationships between the constructs can
be made.

The literature on social-relational factors and homesickness have
focused on domain specificity (e.g., school belongingness or parental
attachment, etc.). While it is important to recognize the nuances of these
social-relational factors in relation to their domains, non-domain-specific
factors that influence the oscillation between both the home and the new
place may be a focus in future inquiry.

Past researches have focused on home homesickness as related to
academic performance and adjustment problems among university
students, with inconsistent evidence that could be due to the measurement
of academic engagement via primarily behavioral indicators. However,
there is surprisingly a lack of research on the associations of homesickness
with affective and cognitive engagement. Future research may consider
teasing out specific processes or mechanisms that could explain how and
why homesickness affects every aspect of academic engagement in order
to provide a clearer picture of how homesickness could influence students’
learning and other academic outcomes. Similarly, since the current
research provides evidence of the relationships between social
connectedness, homesickness, and academic engagement, future
longitudinal designs that take examine the trajectories of social
connectedness, homesickness, and academic engagement throughout the
academic term can be conducted to provide more accurate evidence of the
temporal order and relationships of these constructs.


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