A Systematic Review of Instruments Measuring College Students’ Sense of Belonging

Xiaoye Yang; Hsien-Yuan Hsu; Giovanni Bautista; Yanfen Li

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Reviewing Methods for Educational Research
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 19
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--42527
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/42527
Download Count: 740

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Paper Authors

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Xiaoye Yang University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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Xiaoye yang is a Ph.D. student majoring in Research and Evaluation in Education at UMass Lowell. For over a decade, she has been involved in the language and education field holding various roles such as student, teacher, and researcher. She is a research assistant working at the center for program evaluation to conduct research on program evaluation methods as well as to offer evaluation planning, consulting, training, and services for the university, regional, and global community. Her research interest includes STEM education, assessment, and program evaluation. She is working on measuring college students’ sense of belonging, especially in the engineering field, facilitating school leaders' and educators’ work in promoting engineering students’ success and broadening participation in engineering.

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Hsien-Yuan Hsu University of Massachusetts, Lowell orcid.org/0000-0003-2155-2093

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Dr. Hsien-Yuan Hsu is an Assistant Professor in Research and Evaluation in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr. Hsu received his PhD in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University and has a background of statistics education. He works closely with researchers in STEM to pursue high quality of STEM education for future researchers. He is currently participating in an NSF-funded grant (#1923452) to spearhead research into middle school students’ digital literacies and assessment. Recently, Dr. Hsu has received a seed grant at UML to investigate how undergraduate engineering students’ digital inequalities and self-directed learning characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy) affect their learning outcomes in a virtual laboratory environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Hsu’s research interests include advanced quantitative design and analysis and their applications in STEM education, large-scale assessment data (e.g., PISA), and engineering students’ perception of faculty encouragement and mentoring.

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Giovanni Bautista University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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Yanfen Li University of Massachusetts, Lowell orcid.org/0000-0002-9465-7147

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Dr. Yanfen Li is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2018. Dr. Li has extensive experience in engineering education focusing on recruitment and retention of underrepresented and under resourced students and engineering pedagogy. Her work spans the areas of curriculum instruction and design, program design and evaluation, and the first-year college experience.

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Abstract

This research paper measures college students' sense of belonging. Students' sense of belonging (SB) has been identified as a critical contributor to engineering students’ persistence, academic success, and professional identity in engineering. Therefore, how to accurately measure SB has become an emerging topic but is still challenging. Although engineering education researchers are interested in measuring students’ SB, they have presented concerns over selecting an appropriate instrument that results in trustworthy measurement outcomes. One of the reasons that cause challenges is that SB is a complicated construct that has various conceptual definitions. For example, Goodenow (1993) defined SB as “being accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others...feeling oneself to be an important part of the life and activity of the class” (p. 25), which can be measured as a general SB. On the other hand, Freeman et al. (2007) viewed SB as a multi-dimensional construct that includes class belonging, university belonging, professors’ pedagogical caring, and social acceptance. Thus far, several instruments have been developed to measure SB from a single-dimensional perspective (e.g., Goodenow’s Psychological Sense of School Membership) and a multi-dimensional perspective (e.g., Slaten et al.’s the University Belonging Questionnaire). To our best knowledge, little research effort has been made to synthesize the information of instruments developed for measuring college students’ SB. This paper attempts to close the gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review following PRISMA (the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines to summarize the information and characteristics of existing SB instruments, including the theoretical framework underlying the instrument, psychometric properties in previous studies, and validation works that have been carried out. Specifically, this paper focuses on the following aims: (a) to summarize how SB has been constructed and defined by different theories in higher education, (b) to report existing measurement instruments of SB used in higher education and their psychometric properties (reliability and validity), and (c) to compare various analytical plans for establishing the construct validity (including multicultural validity) in prior instrument development studies. The emergent findings provide insights into how to effectively measure SB and would facilitate school leaders' and educators’ work in promoting engineering students’ success and broadening participation in engineering. Keywords: Sense of belonging, engineering education, instrument, systematic review

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Yang, X., & Hsu, H., & Bautista, G., & Li, Y. (2023, June), A Systematic Review of Instruments Measuring College Students’ Sense of Belonging Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42527

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This research paper measures college students&#39; sense of belonging. Students&#39; sense of belonging (SB) has been identified as a critical contributor to engineering students’ persistence, academic success, and professional identity in engineering. Therefore, how to accurately measure SB has become an emerging topic but is still challenging. Although engineering education researchers are interested in measuring students’ SB, they have presented concerns over selecting an appropriate instrument that results in trustworthy measurement outcomes. One of the reasons that cause challenges is that SB is a complicated construct that has various conceptual definitions. For example, Goodenow (1993) defined SB as “being accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others...feeling oneself to be an important part of the life and activity of the class” (p. 25), which can be measured as a general SB. On the other hand, Freeman et al. (2007) viewed SB as a multi-dimensional construct that includes class belonging, university belonging, professors’ pedagogical caring, and social acceptance. Thus far, several instruments have been developed to measure SB from a single-dimensional perspective (e.g., Goodenow’s Psychological Sense of School Membership) and a multi-dimensional perspective (e.g., Slaten et al.’s the University Belonging Questionnaire). To our best knowledge, little research effort has been made to synthesize the information of instruments developed for measuring college students’ SB. This paper attempts to close the gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review following PRISMA (the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines to summarize the information and characteristics of existing SB instruments, including the theoretical framework underlying the instrument, psychometric properties in previous studies, and validation works that have been carried out. Specifically, this paper focuses on the following aims: (a) to summarize how SB has been constructed and defined by different theories in higher education, (b) to report existing measurement instruments of SB used in higher education and their psychometric properties (reliability and validity), and (c) to compare various analytical plans for establishing the construct validity (including multicultural validity) in prior instrument development studies. The emergent findings provide insights into how to effectively measure SB and would facilitate school leaders&#39; and educators’ work in promoting engineering students’ success and broadening participation in engineering.
Keywords: Sense of belonging, engineering education, instrument, systematic review
AU  - Xiaoye Yang
AU  - Hsien-Yuan Hsu
AU  - Giovanni Bautista
AU  - Yanfen Li
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Systematic Review of Instruments Measuring College Students’ Sense of Belonging 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/42527
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42527
ER  -