A Little Help From Their Friends? How Social Factors Relate to Students' Sense of Belonging at a Large Public University

Abstract

Sense of belonging plays a key role in college students' persistence and successful degree completion. This study evaluated how social factors contributed to students’ sense of belonging at a major Midwestern university when controlling for individual-level and academic factors. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that students’ sense of belonging was significantly associated with underrepresented backgrounds, personality traits, adjustment to college, and friendship variables. We discuss the potential implications of these relationships in promoting retention and student success.

Perceived Social Support and Engagement in First-Year Students: The Mediating Role of Belonging during COVID-19

“…The observed correlations allow us to indicate that there is a strong relationship between perceived social support and the sense of belonging, the first being a significant predictor of the second, in accordance with what was observed in previous research in a regular context and in virtual education during the pandemic [23,24,32]. This implies that, by perceiving greater social support, a greater sense of belonging is also felt.…”

“…It has been demonstrated that in an educational environment, perceived social support is related to the level of engagement that students have [23]. It has been observed that perceived social support and the interpersonal relationships that students establish with their peers, teachers, and members of the university campus are fundamental to develop a sense of belonging [32]. Thus, the sense of belonging is related to the process of integration of a person with the organization they belong to.…”

Early and Dynamic Socio-Academic Variables Related to Dropout Intention: A Predictive Model Made During Pandemic

“…It has been observed that the perceived social support and the interpersonal relationships that students establish with their peers, teachers and members of the university campus are fundamental aspects to develop a sense of belonging [40][41][42][43][44], an aspect inversely related to the dropout intention. This is because social support and positive interactions are essential for the development of a sense of belonging in university students [40,45]. The support of peers and parents has also shown to influence the sense of belonging to the institution and has been linked to a greater institutional engagement [46].…”

“…The sense of belonging is defined as the perception of membership or feeling part of the educational organization (study program) in which they study [61]. Feeling belonging to the career implies that the student feels valuable and respected in their own educational program [40,[43][44][45][62][63][64][65][66]. It implies a perceived bond between the student and others, which unites them to a group or community, even in difficult moments or in the face of challenges [67], and the impulse that mobilizes them to create and maintain meaningful and lasting interpersonal relationships [68].…”

“…It has been observed that high levels in the sense of belonging in university students contributes to increasing their levels of participation, being able to seek help in the face of difficulties, feeling less alone, anxious or depressed, increasing the use of self-regulation strategies and raises levels of academic self-confidence and motivation [64,66,77]. In addition, various investigations have observed that the sense of belonging turns out to be a direct predictor of study engagement, dropout, and permanence in studies [40,41,45,65,66,73,[77][78][79][80].…”