The issue of school district housing is highly characteristic of China. To secure quality educational resources, many Chinese families choose to relocate near schools during compulsory and high school education to facilitate academic convenience. For instance, Beijing’s 2018 policy allowing enrollment through rented district housing reflects this trend. The problem intertwines factors like educational resource allocation, family dynamics, academic pressure, and the psychological relationship between teenagers and parents, presenting feasibility for in-depth research.
The issue of renting district housing is scarcely mentioned in psychological literature and remains under-researched. Given the economic strain, lifestyle challenges, parent-child interactions, and compounded academic-psychological pressures associated with renting in district housing, the mental health of families in this group warrants attention. Researching the psychological status of these families could fill a gap in the literature, representing numerous Chinese families invested in education and highlighting the need for support and attention to this demographic. Adolescent mental health concerns have become a global challenge (Polanczyk et al., 2015), and adolescence is a period of peak social/emotional sensitivity (Blakemore & Mills, 2014), during which teenagers are more vulnerable to environmental stress and social dynamics.
Currently, research on school district housing issues is limited, and domestic literature primarily addresses the topic from a policy perspective (Li Li, 2015). The few available studies from a mechanistic perspective focus on living environments and economic conditions, often based on foreign samples.
A review of the literature reveals these insights about the relationship between living environments and mental health: housing affects mental health, with a sense of home being crucial (Shaw, 2004); green living environments positively impact mental health (Engemann et al., 2019; Mennis et al., 2021); socioeconomic disadvantages negatively affect mental health (Wight et al., 2005; Dashiff et al., 2009). The research questions are as follows:
Research Question 1: Does renting district housing affect the mental health (stress levels, anxiety, etc.) of parents and children?
Research Question 2: If renting district housing impacts mental health, what are the causes (living environment, social relationships such as parent-child, peer, and neighborhood relations, social networks, or cognition)?
Research Question 3: How can we help them address mental health issues? Suggestions include resilience interventions (academic level) and lectures and social activities (practical level) to enhance social connections and parent-child communication.
Research Hypothesis: Renting district housing impacts the mental health of families who rent such housing. This impact may have multiple dimensions (natural living environment, social relationships, self-cognition, including self-esteem and academic stress perception). However, we believe the most significant impact originates from the parent-child dyadic relationship in these families.
Conduct a literature review to explore factors and theoretical frameworks for assessing psychological status.
Formulate the research questions, establish hypotheses, operationally define relevant variables, identify research subjects, and specify independent and dependent variables.
Use surveys and interviews for group sampling and data collection.
Group questionnaire responses by independent variables and analyze relationships between specific independent and dependent variables through methods like linear regression, logistic regression, and independent samples t-tests.
Develop intervention plans and write a paper. Our team members are dedicated and willing to actively learn and improve, committed to progressing together and completing the project. Some members have basic programming skills, interview experience, field research, and online information collection and organization skills, along with preliminary understanding, reflection, and analysis abilities, followed by group discussions. We have sought assistance from professional psychological researchers, gathered online literature and reports, and identified families meeting our research criteria. To reach suitable research subjects, we will use media to facilitate questionnaire distribution, data collection, and case interviews.
We also seek support and promotion from related research institutions to conduct subsequent lectures and social activities, enhancing parent-child communication and social connections among families renting district housing. Academic guidance and resource recommendations are also required.