Belongingness reflects a person’s sense that they are valued within a group. Research shows that a sense of belonging is associated with improved physical and mental health outcomes and reduced emotional distress, suicide, mental illness, and depression. A sense of belonging in school contributes to positive academic outcomes; low absenteeism; higher completion rates; positive attitudes toward learning; higher academic self-efficacy; and reductions in disruptive behavior, emotional distress, and other risky behaviors.
Metric: Inclusion of Other in the Self scale
This metric is a single-item question that measures how connected the respondent feels with another person or group (e.g., family, neighborhood, school, or community organization). Respondents see seven pairs of circles that range from just touching to almost completely overlapping, with one circle in each pair identified as “self” and the second circle identified as “other.” Respondents must answer the question, “Which picture best describes your relationship with [this person/group]?” The researcher identifies what the person or group for the “other” is being represented. The question takes less than one minute to administer. See the report for additional details.
Validity: Researchers have used the scale to measure belonging with various populations, including 5-year-olds, teens, adults, people with low incomes, and formerly incarcerated people. In the example of formerly incarcerated people, those who felt more belonging in their communities experienced greater residential stability and community readjustment and lower rates of recidivism than less connected formerly incarcerated people. This survey is easily understood by respondents.
Availability: This information is not available widely enough in existing data sources to provide coverage at the local level across many geographies.
Frequency: The frequency of how often data for the metric would be collected would depend upon local data collection efforts, but we recommend regular follow-up data collection at least every two years.
Geography: The level of geography that the metric would represent (e.g., county, city, or zip code) would depend on the sampling frame, stratification, and the number of people ultimately surveyed to obtain sufficient power for the survey.
Consistency: The degree of consistency in this metric across different places will vary with the extensiveness of the survey design and number of people surveyed in each place. Ideally, the metric could be consistent across some base level of geography (such as the city or county), but some places would likely have more extensive coverage of residents who have taken the survey. The selection of the “other” should be used consistently at the local level within age groups.
Subgroups: Like geography, the range of subgroups represented and the ability to compare subgroups (e.g., people of color and white people; married and single people; people with children and those without) would depend on the sampling frame, stratification, and the number of people surveyed.
Limitations: The primary limitation is that these data will need to be collected directly by communities. Communities will need to identify through which vehicles data can be gathered. Original data collection may also make benchmarking against other places challenging, depending on the scale and representativeness of data collection in other places. Further, this metric can be sensitive to residential mobility if the same people cannot be followed over time.
