Institutional student support and psychological well-being in Chinese vocational colleges: a two-institution cross-sectional study

Abstract

Institutional student support is a potentially modifiable feature of the educational environment, but its relationship with distinct forms of positive psychological functioning remains underexamined in vocational higher education. This two-institution cross-sectional study examined associations between perceived quality of institutional student-support services and the six dimensions of Ryff’s psychological well-being among 383 students from public vocational colleges in Fujian Province, China. Students completed an 18-item Ryff-based well-being measure and a contextualized 50-item service-quality questionnaire covering accessibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Descriptive analyses addressed students’ well-being and service-quality profiles, and six multiple linear regression models examined associations between observed composite scores. Students reported comparatively stronger positive relations with others and purpose in life, whereas self-acceptance and personal growth were less favorable. Support services were generally rated favorably; accessibility was the lowest-rated service-quality domain and showed positive adjusted associations with all six well-being dimensions, whereas the other service-quality domains showed outcome-specific patterns. The models explained 53.3%–71.3% of outcome variance. These large R 2 values should be interpreted cautiously because predictors and outcomes were collected through same-session self-report measures and may be affected by common-method variance or response-style effects. The findings identify service access and other service-quality domains as candidate priorities for institutional assessment, not as evidence that improving accessibility will directly improve well-being. Prospective, multi-source studies with validated measurement models are needed.