← Back to studentpulse.io
StudentPulse

The Framework › Social

Sense of Belonging & Community

7.9 / 10 ▼ falling

Ranked #3 of 6 in Social · domain mean 8.0

Distribution of responses

Struggling (0-4) Neutral (>4-<8) Thriving (8-10)

How institutions vary

Measured across 148 institutions with enough responses on this topic.

See the institutional spread

How far apart the weakest and strongest institutions sit on Sense of Belonging & Community, and how much of a student's experience is decided by where they study.

One signup unlocks every gated panel on this site. No wall on the articles.

What we ask

Topic-level question

“I feel socially included.”

See all 5 questions and their adaptive follow-ups in the Question Library →

What students say, and why

Where it scores lowest

Exclusion and not feeling safe to be oneself; weak ties across cohorts.

"I don’t feel I can be myself in class, or welcome enough to take part."
Where it scores highest

Teachers who deliberately build connection, room to be yourself, and a class that helps and respects each other.

"The teachers are good at making us get to know each other, while still leaving room to step back and be yourself when you need to."

One comment from each end. Representative, de-identified, translated where needed.

Read all 4 comments

The full set of de-identified student comments from the lowest- and highest-scoring responses on this topic.

One signup unlocks every gated panel on this site. No wall on the articles.

Related insights

Correlation

Students who feel they belong cope far better with academic pressure

Across thousands of paired student responses, students with a strong sense of belonging score close to two points higher on stress and wellbeing than students who feel they don't belong. Belonging is not a nice-to-have. It is a buffer.

 Retention

What keeps students engaged through their studies

Students arrive wanting to finish. Whether they stay engaged is shaped by a handful of experience factors we can measure continuously: belonging, relevance, confidence, and the pressures that wear them down. Exam-readiness confidence runs around 7.4 out of 10 at term start and falls to 5.4 by April.

 Single-stat insight

Students' most reliable source of help is each other

Peer-to-peer help scores 8.4 out of 10, higher than any formal peer-support structure built around it.

 Four factors

Belonging is the factor most tied to wellbeing, and it is won early

EVA names belonging the factor most important for student wellbeing, and finds it is formed most in the transition into study life. That makes it measurable and actionable from the first weeks, not something to fix once a student is already drifting.

How we measure it

This is the topic-level average across its subtopics, on a 0-10 scale (higher is better), so an individual subtopic can score higher or lower than the topic shown here. Figures are scored responses from the last 12 months, mapped to the 2026 framework via the canonical question mapping. Movement compares the most recent six months with the prior six. Distribution bands: 0-4, >4-<8, 8-10. Cross-institution aggregate; no single institution identified; minimum group size applied.

Read the State of the Student Experience 2026

Our annual report: what more than three million student datapoints reveal about wellbeing, teaching and belonging, and what actually moves recommendation and retention. Free, for a work email.

Get the reportBook a demo