Psychological Sense of University Membership: An Adaptation Study of the PSSM Scale for Turkish University Students

Abstract

The Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (PSSM) is a widely used instrument to assess the sense of belonging to a school among adolescents. Despite its widespread use in middle and high school students, to date no particular adaptation study has been conducted for its use among university students. For this reason, the present study conducted an adaptation of the PSSM scale for these students. Five hundred and nine students at a Turkish university voluntarily participated in the study, and the PSSM Scale's factor structure was examined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, identifying three factors representing the students' sense of university membership with acceptable internal consistencies: acceptance by faculty members (.70), belonging (.75), and acceptance by students (.76). The internal consistency of the 18-item scale was calculated as .84. As hypothesized, the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale was also tested. The self-report sense of belonging and degree of satisfaction with the university were positively correlated with the three dimensions of the scale. Also, the scores regarding the students' intention to drop out of university along with loneliness were negatively correlated with all the dimension of the PSSM scale.

Validation of the Spanish Version of the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) Scale in Chilean Adolescents and Its Association with School-Related Outcomes and Substance Use

“…This scale has been used in a large number of studies in different contexts, and it has been translated into several languages (Bernard-Bonnin et al, 2008; Ahn, 2010; Shochet et al, 2011; You et al, 2011; Sari, 2012; Chang et al, 2013; Stallard et al, 2013; Ye and Wallace, 2014; Abubakar et al, 2015; Alkan, 2016). Internal consistency has ranged from 0.73 to 0.95 across samples and countries (Goodenow, 1993; You et al, 2011; Abubakar et al, 2015).…”

Freshmen Program Withdrawal: Types and Recommendations

“…As several authors have already defined the longitudinal (Willcoxson, 2010 ) and temporal (Tinto, 1988 ) dimensions of Higher Education withdrawal, we can conclude that this process can start as early as the time that schooling begins (Bernardo et al, 2017b ). Therefore, students often enter university with very different backgrounds (Rumberger, 1983 ; Bedard, 2001 ; Crawford, 2014 ) and personalities (Heilbrun, 1965 ; Pandey, 1973 ; Alkan, 2016 ), which produces a broad casuistry that must be explored in depth by taking into account each student's point of view (Tinto, 2015 ).…”

Lise Öğrencilerinin Okula Aidiyet Duyguları ve Sosyal İyi Oluşları Üzerine Karma Bir Araştırma

“…Students' academic achievements, fulfillment of their duties in all areas of development and, more broadly, the achievement of educational objectives are closely related to the sense of belonging that students feel about the school. The sense of belonging to the school is a concept that people are more focused on recently (Alkan, 2016). The sense of belonging to the school refers to the personal feelings of the students about how much approval they have from other people in the school, how much they are respected, how much they are included in the activities and supported.…”