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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1394588

A Tale of Two Belongings: Social and Academic Belonging Differentially Shape Academic and Psychological Outcomes Among University Students

Provisionally accepted
Smaranda Ioana Lawrie Smaranda Ioana Lawrie 1*Delwin Carter Delwin Carter 2Karen Nylund-Gibson Karen Nylund-Gibson 2Heejung Kim Heejung Kim 3,4
  • 1 Providence College, Providence, United States
  • 2 Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States
  • 3 University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States
  • 4 Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The benefits of belonging in academic settings are well established; however, past empirical research has for the most part conflated academic and social belonging. This study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) with a sample of undergraduates (N= 837) to determine whether distinct classes or profiles of belonging exist on a college campus and whether class membership predicts academic and psychological outcomes. Four distinct belonging classes emerged: High Social, High Academic belonging (35%), Low Social, High Academic belonging (15%), High Social, Low Academic belonging (38%), and Low Social, Low Academic belonging (12%). The results show that belonging classes play different roles. For academic outcomes (GPA), academic belonging was important, but not social belonging. For psychological outcomes (stress and self-esteem), both academic and social belonging mattered but academic belonging mattered more. These findings demonstrate that investigating the distinctive roles of academic and social belonging is a fruitful theoretical and applied endeavor.

    Keywords: academic belonging, First-Generation Students, School belonging, social belonging, latent class analysis

    Received: 01 Mar 2024; Accepted: 27 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lawrie, Carter, Nylund-Gibson and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Smaranda Ioana Lawrie, Providence College, Providence, United States

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