College students’ sense of belonging in times of disruption: prospective changes from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current study examined whether college students’ sense of belonging changed following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 252 (66.7% female) first- and second-year college students at a large public university in the United States. It was hypothesized that students would report a decrease in their sense of belonging from before to during the pandemic. It was also hypothesized that female students and racial-ethnic minority students, respectively, would report steeper declines in their sense of belonging compared to their male peers and to their White, non-Hispanic peers. Repeated-measures data were analyzed using a multilevel modeling framework to test for mean differences in students’ levels of belonging from pre-COVID to during-COVID periods. No direct change in students’ sense of belonging was detected. Moderation results indicated that sense of belonging decreased significantly over time for racial-ethnic minority students but not for White, non-Hispanic students. The findings encourage higher education researchers and practitioners to consider the unique experiences of racial-ethnic minority college students during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.