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Evaluation of a Questionnaire Measuring University Students' Sense of Belonging to and Involvement in a Biology Department.

ABSTRACT: Sense of belonging and involvement has shown to be positively associated with academic achievement and retention. We argue that a focus on sense of belonging and involvement specifically at the departmental level is valuable, yet rarely discussed in the literature. In this article, we describe the development and evaluation of a questionnaire measuring university students' sense of belonging to and involvement in their "home" department (biology). The questionnaire was named the DeSBI questionnaire (Departmental Sense of Belonging and Involvement) and was administered to students attending an R1 university in the southeastern United States during Spring 2018 (n = 201) and Fall 2018 (n = 737) semesters. Factor analysis indicated a three-factor solution: one factor consisting of five items representing sense of belonging: valued competence; a second factor consisting of six items representing sense of belonging: social acceptance; and a third factor consisting of nine involvement items. Analysis of variance showed significant differences in all subscales between students included in a special biology program, biology majors, and non-biology majors. The study findings support the use of the instrument for measuring biology students' sense of belonging to and involvement in their biology department.

SUBMITTER: Knekta E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8711829 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:TheoryArgumentation is crucial for all academic disciplines. Nevertheless, a lack of argumentation skills among students is evident. Two core aspects of argumentation are the recognition of argument structures (e.g., backing up claims with premises, according to the Toulmin model) and the recognition of fallacies. As both aspects may be related to content knowledge, students studying different subjects might exhibit different argumentation skills depending on whether the content is drawn from their own or from a foreign subject. Therefore, we developed an instrument to measure the recognition of both argument structures and fallacies among the groups of preservice teachers and business economics students in both their respective domains (pedagogy and economics), and a neutral domain (sustainability). For the recognition of fallacies, we distinguished between congruent and incongruent fallacies. In congruent fallacies, the two aspects of argument quality, i.e., deductive validity and inductive strength, provide converging evidence against high argument quality. In incongruent fallacies, these two aspects diverge. Based on dual process theories, we expected to observe differences in the recognition of congruent and incongruent fallacies.AimsWe investigated whether these two abilities are domain-specific and whether the recognition of fallacies depends on the congruence of two aspects of argument quality.Methods267 preservice teachers and 56 business economics students participated in the study. For the recognition of argument structures, participants assigned the five statements constituting one argument to the corresponding component according to the Toulmin model. For the recognition of fallacies, we created arguments and incorporated a common fallacy into some of them: formal fallacy, overgeneralization, irrelevance, or circularity. Participants rated whether the argument was cogent or not, which was followed by a brief justification.ResultsDomain specificity could not be found for either of both abilities. For the recognition of fallacies, two dimensions were found: a congruent dimension (formal fallacies and overgeneralizations) and an incongruent dimension (irrelevance and circularity).DiscussionThe instrument measures the recognition of both argument structures and fallacies in these two groups across domains. The recognition of fallacies differs depending on whether the deductive validity and the inductive strength of the argument are equally indicative of argument quality or not.

Project description:Sense of belonging is a student's sense of feeling accepted, valued, and included by others in their discipline. Imposter syndrome is self-perceived intellectual fraud in areas of success. Sense of belonging and imposter syndrome can influence behavior and well-being and are linked to academic and career outcomes. Our objective was to evaluate if a 5-d tour of the beef cattle industry changed college students' sense of belonging and imposter tendencies with a focus on ethnicity/race. Procedures involving human subjects were approved by the Texas State University (TXST) IRB (#8309). Students from TXST and Texas A&M University (TAMU) attended a beef cattle industry tour in the Texas Panhandle in May 2022. Identical pre- and post-tests were administered immediately before and after the tour. Statistical analyses were conducted with SPSS v.26. Independent sample t-tests were used to evaluate the change from pre- to post-survey and one-way ANOVA was used to evaluate the effect of ethnicity/race. Students (n = 21) were mostly female (81%); attended TAMU (67%) or TXST (33%); and were White (52%), Hispanic (33%), or Black (14%). "Hispanic" and "Black" were combined as a single variable to analyze differences between White and ethnoracial minority students. Before the tour, there was a difference (P = 0.05) in sense of belonging in agriculture between White (4.33 ± 0.16) and ethnoracial minority (3.73 ± 0.23) students such that White students had stronger belonging. There was no change (P = 0.55) in White students' sense of belonging as a result of the tour, from 4.33 ± 0.16 to 4.39 ± 0.44. However, there was a change (P ≤ 0.01) in ethnoracial minority students' sense of belonging, from 3.73 ± 0.23 to 4.37 ± 0.27. There was no change (P = 0.36) in imposter tendencies from the pre-test (58.76 ± 2.46) to the post-test (60.52 ± 2.79). Ultimately, participating in the tour increased ethnoracial minority, but not White, students' sense of belonging and did not impact imposter syndrome tendencies across or within ethnicity/race. One benefit of implementing experiential learning opportunities in dynamic social environments is the potential to improve students' sense of belonging, especially in disciplines and careers where ethnoracial minority people are underrepresented.

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Evaluation of a Questionnaire Measuring University Students' Sense of Belonging to and Involvement in a Biology Department.

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