Abstract
This study considers how the psychological adjustment of ethnic minority college students may be linked to a sense of school belonging and ethnic identity, two constructs related to individuals feeling like they belong to a larger group. Using self-reports from 311 undergraduates from ethnic minority backgrounds, school belonging was found to be negatively associated with depressive symptoms, and positively associated with perceived self-worth, scholastic competence, and social acceptance, while ethnic identity was only found to be positively associated with self-worth. Furthermore, the interaction between ethnic identity and school belonging was significantly associated with self-worth, suggesting that in the absence of a sense of belonging at school, stronger ethnic identity was linked to higher self-worth. College students reported the lowest levels of self-worth when they were neither connected to their college nor connected to their ethnic group.
Notes
Analyses were run to determine if dichotomizing the family standard of living variable into low-income versus not would alter the findings. While this variable was found to similarly predict depressive symptoms and scholastic competence, when used in the regressions as a control variable it accounted for less of the variance than the 5-point scale. Based on these analyses, the 5-point scale was utilized in these analyses as it was the more conservative approach to testing the associations of interest.