The Promise and Limitations of Student Belonging as a Predictor of Retention

4.2. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Students’ Intention to Persist?

To address this particular research question, plots have been developed to show the absolute levels of students’ sense of belonging and intention to persist at each of the four survey points (Figure 2). This shows a consistent pattern in that students’ sense of belonging and intention to persist are closely linked. It should be noted that the intention to persist scale was not asked of students at the beginning of the study, as it was felt that it was too early into students’ time at university to ask about persistence.

Given that they were measured by separate scales, little focus should be given to the fact that intention to persist was consistently greater than students’ sense of belonging at all measurement points. Whilst, the questions in each scale were devised using the same Likert scale—from strongly disagree to strongly agree—they are different scales. Instead of focusing solely on absolute values, instead more insight can be gained by exploring changes over time. Through this lens, it is clear that both students’ sense of belonging and intention to persist decreased slightly on average through the first academic year of study.

The strength of the connection between these two constructs is explored further through the use of linear regression analyses. Given the longitudinal nature of this study, there are multiple ways to assess the connection between student belonging and intention to persist through regression analyses. Four connected analyses were conducted to explore this looking at the strength of the relationship between the following:

Belonging and intention to persist at each survey measurement point (Table 3)—to explore whether the relationship between the variables is stronger or weaker at certain points in the year;
Average sense of belonging against the average intention to persist (Table 4 and Figure 3)—to explore the strength of the relationship between the variables when looking at a students’ experience across all data points;
Students’ sense of belonging and intention to persist at the next survey measurement point (Table 5)—to explore whether the sense of belonging is a reliable predictor of future intention to persist. This could then indicate how belonging could be used as a lead indicator of intention to persist—in a similar way to how intention to persist is seen as a lead indicator of continuation itself;
Change in students’ sense of belonging against change in students’ intention to persist (Table 6)—to explore whether efforts to affect students’ sense of belonging could be expected to have corresponding shifts in students’ intentions to persist.

For all of these regression models, while the focus of the analyses was exploring the relationship between a sense of belonging and intention to persist, students’ demographic variables were included in the models so that any differences across demographic categories could be accounted for. As none of the demographic variables showed statistically significant relationships with intention to persist in these models, they have not been presented in the below results tables for clarity of presentation. Full regression results tables can be found in Appendix B.

Table 3 shows the first of four linear regression analyses to explore the strength of the relationship between students’ sense of belonging and intention to persist. At each survey measurement point, there was a very strong, positive relationship between the two constructs. Estimate values ranged from 0.919 to 0.955, suggesting that each percentage increase in students’ sense of belonging was associated with slightly less than a one percent increase in students’ intention to persist. All coefficients had a statistical significance of less than 0.001. These analyses also suggest that the positive relationship between a sense of belonging and intention to persist was slightly stronger at the end of the academic year (in the May survey) compared to the February and December survey points.

Building on the above analysis, a regression model and scatter plot were created to show the relationship between each participant’s average sense of belonging and average intention to persist (Table 4).

Given that belonging and intention to persist were strongly correlated within each survey measurement point, it perhaps could be expected that the relationship between the average values for these two constructs would be similarly high. In fact, the average sense of belonging was almost a perfect predictor of students’ average intention to persist (β = 0.989, p < 0.001, n = 66).

Whilst not true for all constructs measured in surveys, there is a risk that the extremely high correlations between these variables could be explained by common method bias, as students were completing their questions about the sense of belonging and intention to persist within the same overarching questionnaire. There is a risk of acquiescence bias: if students had been responding positively to the questions about belonging, then this could have primed them to also respond more positively to all subsequent questions: those around intention to persist.

To explore whether the relationship between a sense of belonging and intention to persist remained beyond a single time point—and therefore beyond a single measurement point—a regression model was developed to explore the relationship between a sense of belonging at any survey point and the corresponding intention to persist score at the next survey measurement point (Table 5).

The above regression model produced another very strong, positive, and significant correlation, suggesting that even though both belonging and intention to persist are fluid concepts, students’ sense of belonging can be a useful predictor of where students’ intention to persist will be in the future. It should be noted that whilst this regression model produced a significant result (p < 0.001), the estimated value was slightly lower than in the previous set of models (β = 0.804), suggesting that students’ sense of belonging has a stronger association with intention to persist at the same point in time than it does for future intention to persist measurements. Given this fluidity, one further analysis was carried out to explore the relationship between changes in students’ sense of belonging and changes in intention to persist (Table 6).

Table 6 shows that when looking at the overall change in students’ sense of belonging across the first academic year of study—in essence, their final self-reported sense of belonging score minus their first—this is once again very strongly, positively and significantly correlated with changes in students’ intention to persist.

Overall, this suggests that students’ sense of belonging is positively correlated with their intention to persist at an overall average level and at each individual time point. Sense of belonging is also a predictor of future intention to persist, as measured through the relationship between any belonging measurement and the intention to persist measurement for that same student within the next survey—for example, students’ sense of belonging in December being able to predict students’ intention to persist scores in February.

Given the strength of the relationship between belonging and intention to persist, an immediate question to explore would be whether the two scales are just measuring the same constructs. Whilst most of the questions in the Yorke belonging scale do not appear related to the questions included within the intention to persist scale, there is one that has the risk of conceptual overlap. The question: “I wish I’d gone to a different university (reversed scale)” does seem at least somewhat conceptually related to the questions being asked in the intention to persist scale, as it is asking students to reflect on whether they perceive regret in choosing their current university of study. This is not asking the same thing as any of the questions in the intention to persist scale, as it is asking the student to reflect rather than asking about their commitment to make a forward-looking decision that would involve them leaving their current university. However, it is somewhat conceptually related as a question to the intention to persist scale. How this potential conceptual overlap should be addressed is included in the discussion section of this article. Another possible explanation is that both a sense of belonging and an intention to persist may reflect deeper psychological traits within participants, which explains why they are so closely correlated over time.

4.3. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Continuation?

Similar to the previous section of this article, this research question was explored through a combination of data visualisation and regression analyses. Unlike the intention to persist, whether students continue in their studies or not is a binary variable. Therefore, binary logistic regression has been utilised to explore the strength of the relationship between this outcome variable and students’ sense of belonging. As noted within the methodology section of this article, average marginal effects have also been calculated and included within the regression tables to support meaningful interpretation of the strength of relationships.

To begin the analyses to address this research question, students’ sense of belonging was plotted across the first academic year of study but split based on students’ eventual continuation results (Figure 4).

This visualisation of students’ sense of belonging, split by students’ eventual continuation status, begins to show that there is a clear connection between these variables. Interestingly, the average October survey measurements for belonging are almost the same across the continuation split. This suggests that this October measurement of belonging was no indicator of students’ eventual continuation status. However, all subsequent average measurements of belonging show a clear separation between those who continued and those who did not.

Binary logistic regression analyses (Table 7) were then utilised to explore the extent of the relationship between students’ sense of belonging and continuation. Given the previous analyses, which showed that the relationship between belonging and intention to persist is incredibly strong, only belonging has been included in these analyses, rather than including both belonging and intention to persist—as the inclusion of another highly correlated item would not be valuable in the regression model. These regression models were developed to include students’ demographic variables for consistency with previous analyses within this article; however, the results shown below only include the results of the overall intercept, belonging values, and average marginal effects. Full demographic details of these regression results are included in Appendix B.

The above regression models show that there are positive and significant relationships between students’ sense of belonging and eventual continuation. As was noted from Figure 4, October sense of belonging survey results were not a predictor of eventual continuation—with a very low estimated coefficient value and no significance. However, all subsequent belonging surveys were strong, significant predictors of belonging. For each additional percentage point in students’ sense of belonging, students’ likelihood of successfully continuing also increased by roughly one per cent for the December, February, and May surveys. Students’ change in belonging was not a significant predictor of continuation. Students’ average belonging was a significant predictor of belonging; however, this is more likely to be expected, as averaging across the different surveys reduces measurement error, thus increasing the chances of a significant result. Furthermore, each percentage point increase in belonging predicted an increase in students’ continuation rate of 0.6%, less than when looking at the December, February, and May surveys individually.

Overall, these results strongly suggest that students’ sense of belonging is a significant predictor of students’ eventual continuation. However, two important caveats to this are that students’ measurement at the start of the academic year—in October—was not significantly associated with students’ eventual continuation, and neither was students’ change in sense of belonging.

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David Gilani www.mdpi.com

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The Promise and Limitations of Student Belonging as a Predictor of Retention

4.2. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Students’ Intention to Persist?

4.3. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Continuation?

Greenberg

4.2. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Students’ Intention to Persist?

4.3. To What Extent Is Students’ Sense of Belonging a Predictor of Continuation?

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