The Promise and Limitations of Student Belonging as a Predictor of Retention

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, this study offers valuable insights into student retention and contributes significantly to the existing academic dialogue surrounding sense of belong on intention to persist and retention. More specifically, the longitudinal data design offers a more nuanced understanding of this topic than the previous literature provides. I have only a few minor comments for the authors to consider:

• The authors have done an excellent job situating their study within the existing body of literature, including identifying their gap. However, on Page 2, they mention that "few studies" have examined both intention to persist and retention together. This implies that some studies have done so, but it is not clear what those studies were and how this one differs or builds upon them.

• In Figure 1, the authors state that 66 students completed a follow-up survey. I assume that means 66 unique students completed at least 1 of the three offered follow up surveys? Did some students complete multiple? Would be nice to clarify that.

• Line 256 (page 6), the item for the intention to persist scale written as "I sometimes consider changing my university" says it was "adapted as above" but it is unclear what the above is since there are multiple adaptations already listed above. I would recommend clarifying what this refers to.

• Not sure if it is just my screen or the way it is formatted on the review document, but figures 2 and 4 appear blurry and are hard to make out.

• For figure 4, the caption and axis state that the figure includes both sense of belonging and intention to persist, but it appears from the writeup that the vertical axis data is just for sense of belonging. This should be clarified.

Finally, I would like to comment the authors for the diligent and thorough statistical analysis. The research demonstrates strong decision-making regarding data analysis at every phase. The authors have accounted for every significant consideration I was wondering about as I was reading, leading to a well-structured and effective analysis of their data.

Author Response

Comments 1: The authors have done an excellent job situating their study within the existing body of literature, including identifying their gap. However, on Page 2, they mention that "few studies" have examined both intention to persist and retention together. This implies that some studies have done so, but it is not clear what those studies were and how this one differs or builds upon them.

Response 1: Thank you for the positive comments about the literature and noting this gap. In our review of the literature, we did not find any studies that have examined both outcome variables together (as well as students’ sense of belonging). We did not feel comfortable saying that there are ‘no’ studies that have covered this – there may be studies not published in English or requiring paid-for content – however, we have adjusted the wording to remove this ambiguity: “there is an absence of studies that have looked at both of these outcome variables together”. We hope that this more clearly indicates that we are not aware of any such studies.

 

Comments 2: In Figure 1, the authors state that 66 students completed a follow-up survey. I assume that means 66 unique students completed at least 1 of the three offered follow up surveys? Did some students complete multiple? Would be nice to clarify that.

Response 2: Yes, it is 66 unique students with a total of 136 surveys completed. We have adjusted the figure to emphasise that it is 66 unique students. In addition, we have added this to the caption: “Demographic details, baseline belonging levels and continuation data were collected for all 101 study participants. 66 unique students took part in at least one of the follow-up surveys, submitting a total of 136 survey responses across the three survey timepoints.”

 

Comments 3: Line 256 (page 6), the item for the intention to persist scale written as "I sometimes consider changing my university" says it was "adapted as above" but it is unclear what the above is since there are multiple adaptations already listed above. I would recommend clarifying what this refers to.

Response 3: Ah yes, we see how that is ambiguous. We have re-written this line to change “adapted as above” to “adapted from Nemtcan et al. [59], removing the term ‘before graduation’ (for the reasons discussed in the point above)”

 

Comments 4: Not sure if it is just my screen or the way it is formatted on the review document, but figures 2 and 4 appear blurry and are hard to make out.

Response 4: It’s not your screen. We have re-processed these graphics and included them in the paper with a higher DPI (300). Thank you for flagging this.

 

Comments 5: For figure 4, the caption and axis state that the figure includes both sense of belonging and intention to persist, but it appears from the writeup that the vertical axis data is just for sense of belonging. This should be clarified.

Response 5: Thank you for spotting this. It’s a legacy axis label and caption from a previous version of the graph. We have updated this now to emphasise that it’s just sense of belonging on the Y-axis

 

Response to overall feedback: We really wanted to thank you for being so constructive in your feedback. A great level of detail, whilst taking time to add positive comments about broader areas of the paper. Really helps with the motivation to address revisions, so we appreciate it.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The research is generally very good. The topic is interesting for both academic teachers, university workers and educational researchers. The manuscript is well written, the methods as well as data analyses are well chosen. The results are clearly presented and discussed, I didn't find anything that would need correction or improvement. 

Author Response

Response to overall feedback: thank you for reviewing our paper and being so positive about the topic, our study design, and clarity of presentation.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article should be rewritten. Introduction has parts of methodology, no objective where find

Methodology is not described, instruments are not presents, you wrote 2   Appendix  and they have to be in methodology

Conclusions are too short

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comments 1: The article should be rewritten. Introduction has parts of methodology, no objective where find

Response 1: We considered this comment and felt that the introduction does already have very clear research questions. However, we have re-written the first sentence of the introduction to make it clearer what the objective of the study is: “This objective of this study is to explore how students’ sense of belonging is associated with retention”. This first sentence then follows into why this topic is important and the subsequent research questions.

We have reviewed the introduction and could not see any methodological details.

 

Comments 2: Methodology is not described, instruments are not presents, you wrote 2   Appendix  and they have to be in methodology

Response 2: We have amended the first sentence of the materials and methods section to add more clarify on the methodology of this study (i.e. a quantitative longitudinal analysis of survey data). This first sentence now reads: “As part of an overarching study on student belonging, 101 participants have been included within the quantitative longitudinal analyses of survey data for this article because they provided baseline measurements for their sense of belonging and continuation data was able to be provided for them from their respective institutions.”

We have reviewed the methodology section and would like to highlight for the reviewer the places where the instruments are presented. The ‘Measures’ section (beginning on line 213) highlights how continuation is defined, as well as the development of the intention to persist scale, and the existing, validated scale used to measure sense of belonging. These two latter instruments are also captured in Table 1 (line 290).

We considered the reviewer’s comment about including the appendices within the methodology section. These details have been included as appendices to provide reassurance to readers on the rigour for assessing the instruments, addressing missing data, and providing more detailed regression results. We believe that including these in the main text would reduce the clarity and impede the flow of the article for most readers, so have kept them as separate appendices.

 

Comments 3: Conclusions are too short

Response 3: Thank you for this comment. We feel that the conclusion section is an appropriate length, given that we do not wish to repeat points that we have already made in the discussion section. If there are any specific points that you feel are missing from the conclusions section, please let us know and we will aim to include it if it is possible to do so.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

You have to review discussion

Author Response

Comments 1: You have to review discussion

Response 1: 

The authors have reviewed the discussion section and believe that the conclusions presented are thoroughly supported by the results of the article and linked clearly with existing literature.   

5.1 Student belonging is a strong predictor of intention to persist and eventual continuation

• This is evidenced by the results in section 4.2. To what extent is students’ sense of belonging a predictor of students’ intention to persist?, as well as 4.3. To what extent is students’ sense of belonging a predictor of continuation?
• This discussion section covers the existing research that also finds similar results (references 1 - 7 and 8 - 14)
• The section discusses the validated scale (reference 58) used to measure belonging and the extent to which this overlaps with the instrument for measuring intention to persist
• The section also discusses how existing literature around graduates' reflection on sense of belonging adds additional context to this claim  

 

5.2 Students’ sense of belonging when measured at the beginning of the first year is not a reliable predictor of continuation -

• This is evidenced through the results section 4.3. To what extent is students’ sense of belonging a predictor of continuation? - in particular the results of the multiple binary logistic regression analyses used in Table 7
• A reference is included to an existing study that has found a similar limitation in early measurements of belonging (reference 56)
• Discussion is included to cover the impact of this limitation on evaluating early efforts to enhance students' sense of belonging (multiple references included here around belonging interventions)
• Furthermore, the section discusses alternative explanations for this finding - and how future research might address this, which then leads into the next section.   

 

5.3. covers "limitations and future research opportunities".   

If there are any specific points that you feel are missing from the discussion, please let us know and we will aim to include them if it is possible to do so.