Causality between sense of belonging and exam performance in introductory physics

Determine the causal contributions between students’ sense of belonging in physics—operationalized via Impostor Syndrome scores—and their exam performance in Pomona College’s Physics 42 (non-majors) course; specifically quantify how much a sense of belonging affects exam scores and how much exam performance affects a sense of belonging.

Background

The paper reports that, in Physics 42 (the non-majors course), higher exam scores were associated with lower feelings of Impostor Syndrome (p=0.0019). Qualitative interviews described differences in students’ comfort with raising questions in class and participating in department activities, suggesting potential pathways for belonging to impact performance.

Because the paper is correlational, the authors explicitly note that it does not resolve the direction of causality between belonging and performance. They pose a concrete question for future work to determine whether belonging improves performance, performance enhances belonging, or both.