This report integrates definitions gathered from multiple papers on belonging in math and academics with responses from a panel of students, educators, and researchers to construct a comprehensive definition of belonging.
After reviewing multiple studies linked to belonging, the authors cataloged 24 different scales and collected potential items from the panel. These 299 scale items were pooled and categorized according to whether they should be excluded or whether they successfully captured self-perceptions of belonging or meta-perceptions of whether others saw the respondent as belonging.
Items were also categorized across four contexts: math generally, math classes, past experiences, and future situations. Most of the remaining 124 items assessed self-perceptions of belonging in math class or math generally.
Meta-perceptions, perceptions of past or future experiences, and reversed items capturing experiences of exclusion were under-represented. Because balancing the full scale would require generating more than 300 additional items, the authors constructed a 34-item scale grounded in items that matched five aspects of the definition and drew from influential past scales for further empirical testing.