Abstract
Efforts to improve student retention are regularly explored within higher education literature and practice due to their status as a noble aim shared by governments, universities, and
students themselves. To this end, students’ sense of belonging has become an increasingly popular
topic of study due to its comprehensive links to student success. However, while student retention
is understood as a binary, externally defined metric, student belonging is subjective, messy, and
dynamic. This study utilises a longitudinal design to explore the changing relationship between
student belonging, intention to persist, and eventual continuation with 101 first-year undergraduate
students at two English universities. Regression analyses were utilised to build on previous research
showing the near-perfect correlation between belonging and students’ intention to persist. Sense of
belonging was also a strong predictor of eventual continuation status for all time-point measures of
belonging except at the start of the first academic year. These findings provide further evidence for
the promise of student belonging as a tool for practitioners to pre-empt risks of withdrawal. However,
the findings also suggest that early measurements of a sense of belonging could be less reliable.
students themselves. To this end, students’ sense of belonging has become an increasingly popular
topic of study due to its comprehensive links to student success. However, while student retention
is understood as a binary, externally defined metric, student belonging is subjective, messy, and
dynamic. This study utilises a longitudinal design to explore the changing relationship between
student belonging, intention to persist, and eventual continuation with 101 first-year undergraduate
students at two English universities. Regression analyses were utilised to build on previous research
showing the near-perfect correlation between belonging and students’ intention to persist. Sense of
belonging was also a strong predictor of eventual continuation status for all time-point measures of
belonging except at the start of the first academic year. These findings provide further evidence for
the promise of student belonging as a tool for practitioners to pre-empt risks of withdrawal. However,
the findings also suggest that early measurements of a sense of belonging could be less reliable.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 993-1016 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | trends in higher education |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 23 Nov 2024 |