Initial Development and Validation of the School Belongingness Scale

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and preliminarily validate a short self-report measure for assessing students’ sense of belonging to school using a Turkish sample. Participants were 562 students in one secondary and two high schools in an urban city in Turkey. The results provide adequate psychometric support for recommendation of the School Belongingness Scale’s use with two dimensions and 10 items, in order to assess adolescents’ school belongingness levels. Findings from confirmatory factor analysis suggest that the two-factor model was replicated. The total SBS score and those of its subscales correlated significantly with measures of school connectedness, joy of learning, educational purpose, academic self-efficacy, and overall subjective well-being. Further, latent variables path model, which preferred the SBS model to predict the latent constructs of life satisfaction and loneliness indicated that school belonging significantly predicted the criterion variables. Taken together, these results suggest that the SBS is a structurally reliable and valid instrument and has sound psychometric properties for assessing school belonging among secondary and high school students.