What a review says about belonging and student retention

Updated Sep 10, 2026

Updated, 7 September 2026: We have removed claims that a particular survey schedule or comment-analysis process enables earlier retention intervention.

What the study reports

Lan Thi Nguyen, Matthew McDonald, Thao Thi Thu Nguyen, Carmel Foley, Rebecca Kechen Dong and Simon Darcy reviewed 66 empirical studies linking belonging and retention in higher education.

The authors describe a fragmented evidence base and call for stronger conceptual work, an interdisciplinary approach and research that better captures subjective experience and intersectionality. They offer a framework for further research. The paper appeared online in November 2025 and in a 2026 journal issue.

These findings do not show that a belonging score, comment theme or particular sequence of check-ins can predict an individual student’s withdrawal.

How to examine your own claims

Our suggested first step is to write down what a local belonging measure is intended to mean and what decision it will support. Check whether the evidence concerns a feeling, a relationship, an intention to leave or an observed continuation outcome. Those should not silently become interchangeable.

If students describe different experiences under the same survey label, ask what accounts for the difference before combining them into a single interpretation. The separate review of belonging measures raises instrument-validation questions; an open question does not repair a scale’s validity.

Treat a proposed change as something to assess. Define the intended result, the comparison and what else could explain a difference. Keep the account of who responded alongside the findings. These are our evaluation suggestions, not interventions tested by this review. Listening can identify questions worth investigating without establishing the cause of a continuation gap.

Reference

Nguyen, L. T., McDonald, M., Nguyen, T. T. T., Foley, C., Dong, R. K. and Darcy, S. (2026). The implications of sense of belonging for student retention in higher education: a systematic literature review and research agenda. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 50(1), 120–145. Published online 9 November 2025. Publisher record.