During the 2021-2022 school year, students in grades 7-12 have been invited to participate in a Sense of Belonging Survey in partnership with the Catalyst Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. This student survey will help answer the question, “To what extent do students feel a sense of belonging in our school community?”  The survey questions are derived from the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale, which consists of 18 Likert items and is designed to measure student perceptions of belonging and psychological engagement in school. Students choose whether each item prompt relating to student belonging is Never True, Usually Not True, Sometimes True, Often True, or Always True for them.  The overall average PSSM score is represented as a score out of 5.   

To provide actionable insights about belonging and to better inform school district policy, student response data were not only analyzed at the district level, but also aggregated and stratified to observe any trends or differences between identity groups. This report includes the following analyses:

• Grade

• Race & Ethnicity

• Gender

• LGBTQ+ Status

• Special Education

For October 2021, considering 2,462 responses in which students answered all 18 PSSM items, the overall average PSSM score across Abington is 3.63 out of 5 in Fall 2021. In comparison, last year’s overall average PSSM score across Abington was 3.66 out of 5 in Fall 2020, which suggests year-over-year district-wide stability in average student belonging.