Studies focusing on physics undergraduate students have found that women tend not to identify as strongly with physics, compared to men. Recent research has examined potential factors that influence the experience of women in physics. Several of these factors, such as students’ beliefs in their ability to complete physics-based tasks (i.e., self-efficacy) and students’ belief that others perceive them as a physicist (i.e., perceived recognition), have been associated with physics identity in the context of introductory university physics courses in the United States (US). The current study extends this previous work, surveying students at all levels of the undergraduate degree at a research-intensive university in the UK. Students were asked about their physics identity, physics self-efficacy, and the extent to which they believed others perceived them as physicists. The survey responses were then matched with students’ grades. Using matched responses from the start and end of an academic year from 169 students (110 men, 59 women), two analyses were performed. The first analysis found that average scores for women for physics identity, and self-efficacy were lower than for men both at the start and end of the academic year. The second analysis found that after controlling for the start-of-year scores in physics identity, self-efficacy, and perceived recognition, students’ mid-year grades significantly predicted variance in their end-of-year scores for self-efficacy, perceived recognition, and (possibly also) physics identity. This study also found that the gap in perceived recognition between men and women increased over the academic year. The results contribute to understanding potential barriers for women in physics and have implications for instruction in terms of promoting students’ physics identity, self-efficacy, and perceived recognition.

The social cure is the concept that strong connections and social bonds are good for wellbeing and physical health. Having strong social support makes hardship easier to cope with. We hypothesize that we could apply the relationship to educational contexts, with a sense of belonging as part of the cohort or community helping students to cope with educational hurdles, resulting in greater wellbeing. We examined the case of women in physics. Previous research has suggested that women in physics classes report a lesser sense of belonging than men. We aimed to replicate this finding and examine how a sense of belonging relates to wellbeing. We surveyed 310 physics students (205 men, 105 women) from a small research-intensive university in the UK. The survey measured students’ physics identity, sense of belonging to the physics community, self-efficacy (belief in ability to complete physics-based tasks), and general wellbeing. We found that women and men reported similar levels of belonging and wellbeing, although women reported less physics identity and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy explained a significant fraction of the variance in wellbeing for both men and women. Additionally, belonging explained variance in wellbeing over and above self-efficacy and physics identity for men, but not for women. These results indicate that for men there is a stronger association between belonging and wellbeing, compared to women, but that it does not result in women having an overall lower sense of wellbeing.