The Impact Of Student Affairs Supports On Students' Comprehensive Qualities: The Mediating Role Of Student Engagement

Abstract

Grounded in Astin’s Input–Environment–Outcome model, this study examines how Student Affairs Supports (SAS) influence Students’ Comprehensive Qualities (SCQ) through the mediating mechanism of Student Engagement (SE). Survey data were gathered from 482 undergraduates across public and private universities in Zhengzhou, China, using a stratified random sampling strategy. Empirical testing was executed via IBM SPSS and AMOS using Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM).

Structural path analytics confirmed that all proposed baseline hypotheses were supported. Student Affairs Supports exerted significant direct positive effects on both Student Engagement and Students' Comprehensive Qualities, while Student Engagement emerged as the primary direct predictor of comprehensive qualities. Bias-corrected percentile bootstrapping further verified that Student Engagement functions as a complementary partial mediator, accounting for 61.41% of the total institutional impact on holistic student development. These findings demonstrate that while university support systems directly foster student capabilities, their primary efficacy lies in triggering active student involvement. University administrators should accordingly pivot from passive resource provision toward engagement-centric administrative designs.