Cultural Capital is Key to a Sense of Belonging for College Students of Color

College students’ sense of belonging contributes to academic achievement and persistence at college as well as offering protective effects against anxiety and depression.

Educational Psychology assistant professors Nidia Ruedas-Gracia and Ge Jiang and graduate student Amir H. Maghsoodi explored the factors associated with college belongingness and evaluated the validity of one popular tool, the Sense of Social Fit Scale, a 17-item measure that has been used in scores of studies on the topic. They found that college students derive belongingness from four broad factors: their identification with the university overall, feelings of being a social match with others on campus, their sense of being accepted and welcome at their school, and their cultural capital.

The latter element, cultural capital —which encompasses the skills and knowledge gleaned from family, mentors, and other cultural brokers – is crucial to racial and ethnic minority students’ sense of belonging at school, said study first author Maghsoodi. Published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology and cowritten by Ruedas-Gracia and Jiang, the study is the first to systematically investigate the factor structure and measurement tool properties since its publication in 2007.

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