Sense of school belonging: Psychometric properties and differences across gender, grades, and East Asian societies

As students’ sense of school belonging (SOSB) is essential for their psychosocial well‐being and academic success, developing precise measures of SOSB is critical for assessing it properly. After an unrelated item was deleted, the SOSB scale showed good psychometric properties, based on Rasch analysis of data from 36,963 students in Grade 4 or Grade 8 from four East Asian societies. While no items showed gender differential item functioning (DIF), two items showed substantial society DIF, and two items showed grade DIF in Japan and South Korea. Concurrent equating created a common measurement scale for the four societies for future comparisons. The multigroup random slope two‐level analysis of the concurrent SOSB measures showed that SOSB is higher among girls than boys. From Grade 4 to Grade 8, SOSBs dropped substantially, especially for South Korea, and gender gaps decreased in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. Hence, studies of interventions to improve SOSB, especially for boys and students in later grades, are vital. Copyright © 2019 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.