Comparison of How Residential Hall Experience Impacts Hong Kong University Students’ Development

Residential halls are an important component of college education, benefiting holistic personal development, as documented by previous research (Kuh et al in What matters to student success: A review of the literature [Commissioned report for the National Symposium on Postsecondary Student Success]. National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, 2006; Pascarella et al in Foreword. Schroeder and Mable (eds) Realizing the educational potential of residence halls, Jossey-Bass, 1994). While previous research has tended to focus on Western universities, the current research aims to improve Hong Kong university students’ residential hall experiences by providing a comprehensive analysis of the impact of hall experiences on students’ academic, social, and independent developmental domains. Comparing students living in residential halls with those who are not residents, it was predicted that students living in halls would outperform their non-hall counterparts in most aspects of development. A total of 1,904 participants from four universities in Hong Kong were recruited to participate in a self-assessed questionnaire tapping into various aspects of students’ development. Contrary to the predictions, the results revealed that students living in halls significantly outranked non-hall residents in five aspects of development: peer-group interactions and communication skills (p =.012), self-efficacy (p =.019), problem-solving skills (p =.012), self-control (p =.001), and open-mindedness (p <.001). These results imply that there is still much to be done to improve students’ residential hall experiences to facilitate students’ personal development.