a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

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HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSdeciding not to go. Students were given the opportunity to select more than onereason.The most common reason students gave for not using the health service when they feltthe need of it is their evaluation that the problem they had was of insufficientimportance. Three other reasons receive a reasonably high percentage ofendorsements. These items have in common a lack of information about the healthservice: not knowing how to obtain an appointment (G9a), not knowing the locationof the service (G9f), and not knowing that the service was free (G9g).Table 77Reasons for students not using the health service: percentage of responsesReasonsPercentage of responsesYes NoG9a I did not know how to get an appointment. (n=130) 43.8 56.2G9b I felt uncomfortable asking for help. (n=125) 30.4 69.6G9c I felt they would not understand me. (n=127) 30.7 69.3G9d I thought my problem was not important enough. (n=134) 63.4 36.6G9e I didn’t know there was such a service. (n=134) 32.1 67.9G9f I didn’t know where to go. (n=134) 51.5 48.5G9g I didn’t know the service was free. (n=136) 50.7 49.3G9h I thought it might influence my academic results. (n=123) 9.8 90.2G9i I thought they wouldn’t be able to help me. (n=128) 32.0 68.0G9j I went to a service off-campus. (n=128) 26.6 73.4G9k Other (n=106)One item stands out as receiving little endorsement as a reason for not using thehealth service. Only 12 students who decided not to use the service when they feltthey needed help indicated that they thought that going to the health service mightaffect their academic results.Students were given the opportunity to provide other reasons for not using the healthservice when they felt they needed help. Some 82 students offered such reasons, withtwo students providing two reasons each. Of these, many answers are not responsivein the sense that they repeat reasons already offered explicitly within the questionnaireitem (n=12) or simply state that the student had not fallen ill (n=46). Additionalreasons included problems with obtaining appointments when needed, the length ofthe queue and the need to wait (n=9), the pressure on student time (n=6), hours ofopening that did not meet students’ needs (n=4), the location of the service (n=2),poor previous experience (n=2), an anticipated language barrier (n=1), fear of thediagnosis (n=1) and laziness (n=1).COUNSELLING SERVICERussell, Rosenthal & Thomson, 2006 99
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSStudents'use of the university's counselling service was also explored. Students wereasked whether they had felt the need of help from the university counselling serviceduring the current year. Of the 970 respondents to this question, 268 or 27.6 per centagreed that they felt they had needed help. The questionnaire provides students withthe opportunity to specify the type(s) of help they needed: academic-educationaland/or career-vocational and/or personal-social emotional counselling. Studentscould identify more than one area of need. Table 78 indicates the percentage ofrespondents selecting each of these areas.Table 78Perceived student need for three types of counselling helpAcademic-educational(n=244)Yes NoType of counselling help neededCareer-vocational(n=124)Yes NoPersonal-social-emotional(n=220)Yes NoFrequency20440 16163 15070Percentageof studentsin need ofhelp (n=268)76.160.156.0It is clear that the strongest perceived need is for help in the academic-educationalarea. Although help is still seen to be needed in the remaining two areas by asubstantial percentage of students, the need is less widespread. Because students hadthe opportunity to indicate the need for help in more than one area, it is possible todetermine the number of students who perceive themselves to have multiple areas ofneed. Some 76 of the 268 students (28.4 per cent) who need counselling help feelthey need help in all three counselling areas. This would seem to identify a group ofstudents who are finding serious challenges in coping with their student life. Thisgroup is augmented by the additional 93 students (34.7 per cent) who indicate thatthey need help in two of the three areas of counselling. Some 26 students withproblems in two or three areas did not seek help.As in the medical health area, perceived need of counselling help did not necessarilytranslate into action. Of the 268 students who said they needed help, 53 or 19.8 percent actually visited the counselling service, a much smaller percentage than was thecase with the health service. In addition, three students who had indicated that theydid not feel the need for help said that they had sought help from the counsellingservice. This means that 5.8 per cent of all respondents said they had accesseduniversity counselling services between course enrolment for 2005 (February) andmid-May.In order to see whether there is a systematic difference between students with anacknowledged need who choose to make use of university counselling services andthose who choose not to do so, a range of demographic and other variables wasexplored. These are the same variables explored in connection with use of universityhealth services.Eight variables differentiate significantly between the two groups:Russell, Rosenthal & Thomson, 2006 100
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