Social Belonging course intervention for first and second year students
Rebecca Prescott
I. Description of Intervention
Social belonging, defined as a sense of having positive relationships with others (especially
peers), is a fundamental human need (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Many minority groups in college programs experience a lack of social-belonging (Walton and Cohen 2011). This is true for
first-year college students in general as well, no matter gender or race, as they transition from
high school to college (Hausmann et al. 2007) . Walton and Cohen (2011) determined that a
brief social-belonging intervention, which involved communicating with upperclassmen improved academic performance and health in minority students. In the sections below I have outlined the requirements for a whole-class social-belonging intervention following the Walton and
Cohen (2011) study. This social-belonging intervention has 3 parts:
1. 20-30 minute discussion with upperclassmen
2. Student essay on social-belonging feelings before and after upperclassmen discussion
3. Video recording for future students on their experiences with social-belonging (voluntary)
II. Data that needs to be collected
A. Biogeographical information of students in courses including but not limited to:
a. Year in school
b. Ethnicity
c. Gender
d. First generation college student
B. Mid-term and final exam scores from previous years
C. Mid-term and final exam scores for the current year
D. Record if students:
a. Participated in intervention (no essay, video)
b. Participated in intervention and wrote essay (no video)
c. Participated in intervention, wrote essay, and recorded a video
III. Requirements for successful social-belonging intervention
A. Prior to course beginning
a. Instructors need previous course data with no specific interventions for 3-5 years.
(These data will function as the control group and possibly provide data for a
permutation-based statistical test).
b. Provide 20-30 minutes of class time at the beginning of the semester for socialbelonging intervention, 1 essay homework assignment (not graded other than participation), and collection of video recordings if students volunteer.
c. Upperclassmen who previously took the class, including some minority students
who are willing to speak to the class at the beginning of the semester.
B. 3-part social-belonging intervention (to be completed during semester)
a. Part 1: Upperclassmen or previous students in the course discuss how they felt
their first year in college, could they succeed at college, particularly in the sciences
b. Part 2: Homework assignment (due one week later): 1-2 page essay discussing
their social-belonging experiences and feelings as a first-year student, with focus on
before and after the intervention.
c. Part 3: For students who wish to volunteer, essay can be turned into a video recording for future social-belonging interventions in the course (extra credit?)
IV. Research Objective and hypothesis
Instructor will investigate if a social-belonging intervention improves undergraduate performance in ocean, earth and environmental science courses. The instructor can measure students'
academic performance against a control group who did not receive the intervention in several
ways. For example, the instructor could compare
- midterm and final test scores among the 2 groups
- retention rates (longitudinal study over several years)
Instructor could also compare differences in academic performance for students who only participate in one aspect of the intervention (upperclassmen talk, reinforcement essay and/or video).
V. Statistical analysis
A.Parametric analysis (data should be continuous variable and approx. normally distributed):
a. For large courses (samples sizes of intervention students should be n ~ 30 or more),
a paired T-test could be used for courses with only a mid-term and final). However,
this would be IF you did not categorize students by gender, year in school, etc…
B. If gender and/or ethnicity is included in the analysis, a multiple regression could be used
(controlling for either gender or race in different tests, and evaluating the effect of the other
variable).
C. Non-parametric analysis: (no assumption of normality and may not be continuous variable):
a. For small courses (or the intervention group is less than 30 students), with only 2
exams (or 2 measures on a student subject) a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Sum Test should
be used. The Wilcoxon signed rank sum test is the non-parametric version of a paired
sample t-test.
b. If gender and/or ethnicity are to be included, there are a number of non-parametric
tests that could be used, treating the data as multivariate. What test would depend on
the specific biogeographical variables, number of students, etc.
References
Baumeister, R.F. and Leary, M.R. (1995). The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation. Psychological Bulletin 117(3): 497-529.
Hausmann, Leslie, R.M., Schofiled, Janet, and Woods, Rochelle L. (2007). Sense of belonging as
a predictor of intentions to persist among African Americans and White first-year college students. Research in Higher Education 48(7): 803-839.
Walton, Gregory M. and Cohen, Geoffery L. (2011). A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science 331: 1447-14.