LibGuides: QEP Research Teams: Sense of Belonging

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Davis, G. M., Hanzsek-Brill, M. B., Petzold, M. C., & Robinson, D. H. (2019). Students’ Sense of Belonging: The Development of a Predictive Retention Model. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 19, 117–127.
Educational institutions increasingly recognize the role that student belonging plays in retention. Many studies in this area focus on helping students improve a sense of belonging before they matriculate or identifying belonging as a reason for their departure. This study measures students' sense of belonging at key transition points during the first year and finds that social belonging and academic performance are both strong predictors of retention that are not necessarily correlated. These results suggest that a comprehensive, focused outreach protocol that encompasses both social and academic factors could have a positive impact on student persistence.
Won, S., Hensley, L. C., & Wolters, C. A. (2021). Brief Research Report: Sense of Belonging and Academic Help-Seeking as Self-Regulated Learning. Journal of Experimental Education, 89(1), 112–124.
Academic help-seeking is a self-regulatory strategy that can have an important influence on students' learning and achievement. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate whether college students' sense of belonging could be used to understand their academic help-seeking. In addition, two aspects of motivation, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning and utility value, were examined as predictors of adaptive and expedient help-seeking strategies within an integrative model. College students (N = 307) completed two online self-report surveys that assessed sense of belonging, motivation, and help-seeking. Results of structural equation modeling showed that sense of belonging significantly predicted reported use of adaptive help-seeking strategies, even when accounting for students' motivation. Self-efficacy for self-regulated learning also positively predicted adaptive help-seeking strategies, whereas utility value negatively predicted expedient help-seeking strategies. Findings support the conclusion that college students' perceptions of their social contexts inform if and how they seek help with their learning.
Gillen-O’Neel, C. (2021). Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement: A Daily Study of First- and Continuing-Generation College Students. Research in Higher Education, 62(1), 45–71.
To date, most research on sense of belonging in higher education has relied upon between-person correlations (e.g., Murphy and Zirkel in Teach Coll Rec 117(12):1–40, 2015; Ostrove and Long in Rev High Educ 30(4):363–389, 2007). In the current study, first- and continuing-generation college students (N = 280) reported their sense of belonging and their emotional and behavioral engagement in college every evening for a week. These data were used to examine both person-level and daily dynamics of sense of belonging and student engagement. With few exceptions, sense of belonging was associated with all types of student engagement at both the person and the daily levels. At the person level: replicating previous research, students with a higher sense of belonging than their peers tended to also have higher emotional and behavioral engagement. At the daily level: regardless of students' typical sense of belonging, if they experienced especially high sense of belonging on a particular day, their emotional and behavioral engagement on that same day tended to be higher than usual. For two measures of student engagement—feelings toward school and in-class engagement—first-generation college students were especially sensitive to day-to-day fluctuations in sense of belonging. There were, however, few other effects of student generation. Overall, results suggest that sense of belonging is an important resource for maintaining student engagement among all students, but especially among first-generation students. In addition, because sense of belonging operates at both person and daily levels, schools can work at both levels to improve students' belonging.
Martinez, E. F., & Munsch, P. (2019). Developing a Sense of Belonging in Community College Students. About Campus, 24(5), 30–34.
Student affairs professionals are inundated with new educational initiatives and jargon. Terms such as “strong start-to-finish” and “loss momentum,” for example, become popular for a while and then fall out of favor. As a result, student affairs professionals usually react by conducting research, publishing articles, presenting papers at conferences, and, on our campuses, developing task forces and committees to address whatever the initiative or issue is that is currently attracting attention. When thinking about these “issues,” we professionals keep returning to this starting point: “How are most, if not all, students’ developing a sense of belonging.” To address this critical question, we thought that we would use a little educational jargon to “unpack” community college students’ sense of belonging because minimal research exists on this topic.
Hausmann, L., Schofield, J., & Woods, R. (2007). Sense of Belonging as a Predictor of Intentions to Persist Among African American and White First-Year College Students. Research in Higher Education, 48(7), 803–839.
This study investigates the role of students’ sense of belonging to their university in college student retention. Using individual growth curve modeling, we examined (a) whether sense of belonging predicts intentions to persist, and (b) the effects of an intervention designed to enhance students’ sense of belonging. African American and white first-year students completed surveys three times throughout the academic year. Students were randomly assigned to a group that received an intervention to enhance students’ sense of belonging or to one of two control groups. Sense of belonging was found to predict intentions to persist, controlling for background variables and other predictors of persistence. Overall, sense of belonging and intentions to persist declined over the academic year. However, the decline in sense of belonging was smaller for students in the intervention group. Implications for the development of college retention programs and for existing models of student persistence are discussed.
Cole, D., Newman, C. B., & Hypolite, L. I. (2020). Sense of Belonging and Mattering Among Two Cohorts of First-Year Students Participating in a Comprehensive College Transition Program. American Behavioral Scientist, 64(3), 276–297.
For first-year students who carry traditionally marginalized identities, comprehensive college transition programs (CCTPs) can offer key wraparound services to help address some of the major academic, social, and financial barriers they may encounter. This article looks at one such CCTP implemented at three public college campuses serving a range of students, including those from low-income, first-generation, and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. More specifically, this study uses regression analyses to look at two cohorts of first-year students’ experiences related to sense of belonging and mattering to their CCTP. The findings suggest that when considering students’ experiences in the CCTP, staff care and support and perceptions of grade check meetings were experiences that were significantly related to both sense of belonging and mattering.
Ramsey, E., & Brown, D. (2018). Feeling like a fraud: Helping students renegotiate their academic identities. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 25(1), 86–90.
A sense of belonging is an integral aspect of success in a long-term, group-oriented endeavor such as the pursuit of a college education. When students feel their presence at college is fraudulent, their achievements unfounded, or that they will be further disenfranchised if their true self is discovered, it is less likely that they will connect to the people who and services that can help them achieve their educational goals. This “imposter syndrome” or “imposter phenomenon” can be addressed and turned around through a concerted effort. While that effort involves a personal journey, like any journey it is often aided and accompanied by others. Through strategic outreach efforts, academic libraries are positioned to be important players in that journey, helping these “imposters” renegotiate their self-images to include a sense of their essential place in academia and belief in their ability to successfully complete their academic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Perez, R. J., Bettencourt, G. M., Hypolite, L. I., & Hallett, R. E. (2022). The tensions of teaching low-income students to perform professionalism. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
As institutions of higher education prepare students for their careers, there is often a focus on teaching students how to demonstrate professional behavior to secure employment. Yet, definitions of professionalism may vary across contexts, and many reflect hegemonic norms, which are not reflective of the realities of low-income students. As such, teaching these students about professionalism may highlight the tensions between framing higher education as a lever for social advancement while it concurrently serves as a tool of social reproduction. Acknowledging these tensions, this constructivist qualitative case study examined how a comprehensive college transition program designed to serve low-income students socialized these students to notions of professionalism. Drawing from observational data collected over 4 years, we found that the program largely framed professionalism as essential for students’ social mobility and used programming to provide information about professional dress, communication, and interactions through a lens that reflected middle-class, gender normative values. Complicatedly, the program also at times described professionalism as a tool that could be used to advance one’s abilities as a leader and to serve one’s communities. Our findings have implications for educators working to support low-income students’ career preparation and to promote their success.