Poster #81 - School belonging as a mediator for interracial climate and depressive symptoms among high school students

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Introduction
Schools have focused more attention on creating an inclusive environment for all students. With a positive interracial school climate, students may feel comfortable interacting with students outside of their ethnicity, which may lead to feelings of higher belonging to the school since they are comfortable with the full school body (Johnson, 2012). Another outcome of improving school climate is better student mental health (Aldrige & McChesney, 2018). However, the association between school climate and mental health is hypothesized to be mediated by school belonging, since previous research has shown a connection with belongingness and mental health (Fink, 2014). The current study aims to explore the role of school belonging as a mediator.
Method
Tenth-grade public high school students (N = 626; 33% Caucasian, 29% Latinx, 18% Asian American/ Pacific Islander, 19% multiracial, 6% African American; 50% male) were recruited from three ethnically diverse high schools in California and Oregon. As part of a larger survey, students reported on school interracial climate, school belonging, and depressive symptoms. School interracial climate (Green, Adams, & Turner, 1988) was measured with 15 items, e.g., “My school celebrates ethnic diversity” 5-point scale: 1 = no way – 5 = for sure yes; α = .80). School belonging (Fuligni, Witkow, & Garcia, 2005) was measured with 12 items (e.g., “I feel close to people at my school”; 5-point scale: 1 = “no way” – 5 = “for sure yes”; α = .91). Depressive symptoms (Kovac, 1992) was measured with 10 items. Each item has three statements and students selected the one best describing them in the past 2 weeks (e.g., I am sad once in a while, I am sad many times, or I am sad all the time; α = .87).
Results
Without school belonging, school interracial climate significantly predicted fewer depressive symptoms (β = -.31). In the full mediation model (Figure 1) with school belonging as the mediator, there were significant paths with school interracial climate associated with more school belonging and school belonging associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Additionally, the path from school interracial climate to depressive symptoms was no longer significant. An Aroian test indicated that the indirect effect of school interracial climate on depressive symptoms through school belonging was significant (z = -6.11, p < .001). Thus, school belonging fully mediated the association of school interracial climate to depressive symptoms, (t (624) = -8.18, p < .001). Additional multi-group analyses comparing White and non-White adolescents indicated similar findings with full mediation for both White students and non-White students.
Discussion
The findings suggest that as schools try to create a healthier environment it is important to focus on students’ feelings of belonging to their school. Students’ sense of belonging may indicate that they have a supportive social group which may lead to the students having a better mental health. However, with limited resources, the findings indicate that schools and teachers can take part in improving both belongingness and mental health for students by establishing a healthy school interracial climate.

Authors

• Tseng Vang, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author

• Emily Templin, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adrienne Nishina, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author