Author(s): River Lee, Madison Ward, Syd Recce, Isabella Monge, Sophie Snow
Mentor(s): Joshua K. Brown, Daniel Hatch, Bryan Koenig, Kirsten Graham
Institution SUU
Introduction: Our research is focused on belonging and stress among college students at a regional university in the Southwestern US. Belonging is an important construct that predicts success, positive wellness, and health for college students (Walton & Cohen, 2011). This construct has mostly impacted those who resonate lower with belonging on college campuses, relating to lower grades, lower graduation rates, worse depression, and worse anxiety (Gopalan & Brady, 2019; Tholen et al., 2022). Our research question aims to determine if belonging and stress are lower now than they were before. Methods: Data were collected over three waves from 2021 - 2024 (N=1798). Wave 1 (n=334) was collected in Spring 2021 as part of a larger national survey examining college students’ behavior and attitudes: Wave 1 included a single item asking about students’ sense of belonging on campus. Wave 2 (n=752) was collected between Fall 2023 - Spring 2024 as part of a larger study on suicidality and associated attitudes among college students: Wave 2 included a measure asking about students’ stress levels (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). Wave 3 (n=712) was collected starting in Fall 2024 as part of an ongoing study on suicidality and associated attitudes: Wave 3 included the single item about belonging and the stress measure (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) along with information about students’ demographics. For analyses, we took a cross-sectional approach whereby we used t-tests to compare belonging between Waves 1 and 3 then compared stress between Waves 2 and 3. Finally, we examined associations between belonging, stress, and demographic factors in Wave 3. Results: Overall, between Wave 1 (M=4.88, SD=1.06) and Wave 3 (M=4.38, SD=1.23) belonging was significantly lower in Wave 3: t(747.73)=6.79, p<.001, d=0.43. The stress factor was examined between Wave 2 (M=18.79, SD=10.18) and Wave 3 (M=15.74, SD=9.31), and the stress students were experiencing also were significantly lower in Wave 3: t(1515.84)=6.11, p<.001, d=0.31. Other factors were looked at to better understand how belonging and stress change over time. Discussion/Conclusion: Our research examines how students’ belonging and stress changed over time. Belonging and stress both declined when comparing more recent data to older data. The main limitations of our research is that the data are cross-sectional and they were collected at a regional university with little diversity. Qualitative findings would help further parse apart associations between our target outcomes.