Socioeconomic and Peer-peer Cultural Value Mismatch, Health and Academic Adjustment Among Dormitory Roommates During the Transition to College

One of the limitations of our prior work on peer-peer cultural value mismatch was that we did not have sociodemographic information of students’ roommates. Thus, we conducted an additional, quasi-experimental design, with roommates from diverse backgrounds that matched or mismatched in first-generation college status. Emerging analyses suggest that predictors and consequences of peer-peer cultural mismatch are only significant in dormitory roommate settings where there was a mismatch in college generation status (i.e., one roommate was a first-generation college student and the other was a continuing generation college student). In situations where there was no mismatch (e.g., both were first-generation or continuing generation college students), there was no significance. This provides the first evidence of the importance of context within the larger university system.