Homesickness in College Students, With a Special Focus on How Having the Food you Like relates to Homesickness

Supervising Faculty: Dr. Irene Frieze

Contact:  Dr. Frieze, frieze@pitt.edu

Area of Research:  Social Psychology

Format: Fully Remote

Description of Research:

I invite you to join me in expanding on a research project examining homesickness and food in college. Homesickness is widely regarded as a common response to moving away from home, but what features make up homesickness? To address this question, students worked this past year to create a new measure of homesickness, based on existing scales, to better capture the specific experiences of college students. The measure explored homesickness as a form of grief and how it relates to adjustment to college. The project also created a scale to understand college students’ satisfaction with food on campus and its relation to homesickness.

I hope to have a small group that discusses how we might learn more about these topics through the expansion of this research. Over the summer, we will review some of the existing theory and empirical research relating to these questions.  Based on this, we will do some exploratory interviews and design a survey to be administered to Pitt students in the fall. Over the summer, each student will be asked to develop formal testable predictions or research questions that can be formally tested in the fall.

Everyone will be asked to attend weekly group meetings and contribute to the overall group project in some way. After formal data collection in the fall, we will work in the Spring semester to analyze the data. Hopefully, each student will be able to present their findings as a research poster presented at Pitt or at a professional psychology meeting in the Spring. If our findings merit this, we will also formally submit for journal publication. Students will have a chance to work with past research assistants from the project to create a new survey developing on the original measures of homesickness and food satisfaction.

Those wishing to volunteer without formal credit are welcomed.   A requirement for credit is to prepare a formal APA-style paper relating to the person’s hypotheses or research questions.

Student Requirements: 

  • 3.0 or higher GPA
  • At least 12 credits in Psychology including Research Methods

Terms offered:  Summer and Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.

Number of Students:  up to 10

Meetings will be held primarily on zoom through the summer.   We may have in-person meetings in the fall although some meetings on zoom may continue.