Developing the Sense of Belonging Scale and Understanding Its Relationship to Loneliness, Need to Belong, and General Well-Being Outcomes

Abstract

The construct of belonging has played a central role in psychological theories for many years, prompting research that benefits many people. However, there is little consensus for how to measure sense of belonging. We developed an 8-item measure of belonging that is easily adapted to specific contexts. The items capture a sense of being valued, accepted, included/connected, and fitting into a social environment. Study 1 examined candidate items and facilitated item selection. Study 2 demonstrated internal consistency and convergent validity of the scale. Loneliness and belonging were inversely correlated but each made independent contributions predicting general measures of well-being. Together, they fully mediated the effect of positive social contact on three of the four well-being measures. Study 3 experimentally demonstrated the differential sensitivity of specific (belonging at your university) and global (belonging in general) forms of the scale. Participants who wrote about an experience of inclusion relevant to a specific context reported more belonging than participants who wrote about an exclusion experience, but only on the specific, and not global, scale. The measure of belonging reported here is validated in adult samples; it is a flexible tool for research on the sense of belonging, its antecedents, and consequences.