Student Experience and Academic Adjustment Measure (SEAM-10) - UK Version

Recent studies emphasise a worrisome rise in mental health challenges among university students, encompassing anxiety, depression, and academic pressure (UCAS 2021; AdvanceHE, 2020; McIntyre et al., 2018, Grant, 2002). Recent findings from our Knowledge Exchange (KE) funded research, which explored students’ experiences and reflections from completing mental health and wellbeing measures, identified a critical gap - that current university measures do not adequately capture

the impact of mental health/wellbeing on a student's academic needs and university experience. Current measures have either not been designed to capture the impact of academic factors and the university experience on mental health, or they would benefit from being updated to capture contemporary needs; such as the Counselling Impact on Academic Outcomes (CIAO) question set (see Wallace, 2012; Scruggs, Broglia, & Barkham, 2023). Scruggs et al. (2023) identified several limitations and opportunities for development from the CIAO. Limitations include the vague wording of the items, the possible bias from positively skewed items, and the specificity of the items referring to the impact of counselling on academic outcomes despite university support services including a range of wellbeing, mental health and talking therapies.

Reliable measurement will identify early academic issues, which predict lower graduation outcomes and negatively affect mental health. The project will provide university services with a tool to use alongside existing mental health measures, capturing the complete picture of student needs, both academic and mental wellbeing, thereby improving interventions for students and demonstrating impacts through evidence-based support.

This study aims to address the limitations of existing measures by developing a modern tool to measure students’ academic needs and university experiences, that can be used by student support services alongside measures of mental health to monitor the factors that have an impact on students’ success at university.

This project received ethical approval from the University of Sheffield School of Psychology Research Ethics Committee, application number 065725.

Items included for download:

• SEAM-10 UK - The UK version of the 10-item SEAM measure, including items and response options.

References

AdvanceHE. (2020). Equality in higher education: Statistical report 2020. AdvanceHE. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/equality-higher-education-statistical-report-2020

Grant, A. (2002). Identifying students concern: taking a whole institutional approach in student mental health needs: problems and responses. London: Jessica Kingsley publication.

McIntyre, J. C., Worsley, J., Corcoran, R., Harrison Woods, P., & Bentall, R. P. (2018). Academic and non-academic predictors of student psychological distress: The role of social identity and loneliness. Journal of Mental Health, 27(3), 230-239.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2018.1437608

Scruggs, R., Broglia, E., Barkham, M., & Duncan, C. (2023). The impact of psychological distress and university counselling on academic outcomes: Analysis of a routine practice‐based dataset. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 23(3), 781-789. Doi: 10.1002/capr.12640

UCAS. (2021). Starting the conversation UCAS report on student mental health (MD-7063). https://www.ucas.com/file/513961/download?token=wAaKRniC

Wallace, P. (2012). The impact of counselling on academic outcomes: The student perspective. AUCC Journal, 7, 6-11