Effects of Personal and Contextual Factors on Status and Belongingness

High social status and belonging to social groups should protect students from anxiety when they enter university. A forum was set up that allowed first year students with diverse backgrounds to raise issues of concern to establish whether this promoted their status and sense of belongingness in the university community. First-year students in a UK university completed a battery of questionnaires on three occasions. Path analysis was used to test whether a personal-contextual model of status and belongingness applied to the university students. Higher scores in mental wellbeing, extraversion, and openness predicted higher status and belongingness to the university, whereas ethnicity mediated by environmental factors indirectly affected status and belongingness. The online Diversity Forum benefits students' status and belongingness, but requires that users engage with it actively and over the long-term. The findings allow recommendations to university administrators about how to promote first-year students' status and belongingness, to reduce anxiety and promote students wellbeing.