Sense of Belonging Instrument SOBI-P & SOBI-A

1. Abstract

The Sense of Belonging Instrument (SOBI), developed by Bonnie M. Hagerty and Kathleen L. Patusky in 1995, is a seminal psychometric assessment created to operationalize, quantify, and empirically differentiate the subjective experience of human belongingness and its operational prerequisites. Rooted in psychological, social, and psychiatric nursing paradigms, the instrument addresses a foundational human need historically articulated by theorists such as Abraham Maslow. The SOBI comprises 27 self-report items partitioned into two distinct, psychometrically autonomous subscales: the 18-item Sense of Belonging Instrument–Psychological (SOBI-P), which measures an individual’s current subjective experience of fit, acceptance, and valued involvement within social environments; and the 9-item Sense of Belonging Instrument–Antecedents (SOBI-A), which evaluates the internal desires, motivations, potential, and behavioral readiness to achieve belonging.

Both subscales employ a four-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 4 (“Strongly Agree”). Extensive psychometric evaluation demonstrates exceptional internal consistency reliability across diverse populations, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .91 to .93 for the SOBI-P and .63 to .76 for the SOBI-A. Test-retest reliability across multiple assessment windows shows high temporal stability (.84 for SOBI-P and .66 for SOBI-A over short- to medium-term retest intervals). Construct, convergent, criterion, and discriminant validities have been extensively corroborated across diverse cohorts, including community-dwelling adults, university students, psychiatric inpatients experiencing major depressive disorders, and chronically ill medical patients. Factor analytic investigations consistently demonstrate the distinct dimensionality of the two scales, while further identifying core dimensions within psychological belonging—specifically valued involvement and perceived fit. The SOBI remains an essential assessment tool in clinical psychology, community psychiatry, social epidemiology, and academic settings, providing critical insights into how alienation, social isolation, and relational deficits contribute to psychopathology, suicide risk, and diminished quality of life.

2. Keywords

Sense of Belonging Instrument, SOBI, SOBI-P, SOBI-A, psychological belonging, antecedents of belonging, social isolation, interpersonal relationships, psychometrics, scale validation, clinical assessment, psychiatric nursing

3. Authors

The Sense of Belonging Instrument was developed by:

• Bonnie M. K. Hagerty, PhD, RN: Associate Professor Emerita of Nursing, Division of Nursing Business and Health Systems, School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Dr. Hagerty has dedicated decades of clinical and theoretical scholarship to psychiatric-mental health nursing, focusing on the conceptual modeling of human belonging, social alienation, depressive symptoms, and the trajectory of affective disorders across clinical and non-clinical cohorts.
• Kathleen L. Patusky, PhD, RN: Prominent psychiatric-mental health researcher and educator, formerly affiliated with the School of Nursing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Dr. Patusky collaborated extensively on the structural operationalization, empirical item development, and clinical validation of the SOBI framework.

Subsequent psychometric expansion, cross-population validation, and childhood antecedent inquiries were advanced in collaboration with colleagues such as Reg Arthur Williams, PhD, RN, FAAN (University of Michigan), Margaret R. Early, and Oe Hiroaki, cementing the SOBI’s international utility across cross-cultural, occupational, and psychiatric clinical populations.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Sense of Belonging Instrument (SOBI) is to provide clinicians, behavioral scientists, and psychometricians with an empirically grounded, standardized metric capable of disentangling the multidimensional nature of human belongingness. While classic psychological paradigms consistently emphasized that the need to belong is a primary human motivation—central to emotional survival, identity formation, and mental equilibrium—earlier scientific literature frequently conflated belongingness with related yet distinct social constructs, including social support, social network density, loneliness, affiliation, and extraversion. Hagerty and colleagues recognized that an individual could possess an extensive social network and receive tangible social support, yet persistently experience a profound internal sense of alienation, estrangement, and non-belonging.

The SOBI was engineered to overcome these measurement limitations by decoupling an individual’s actual affective experience of belonging (SOBI-P) from the precursor conditions, motivational readiness, and self-efficacy required to forge social connections (SOBI-A). In psychiatric and mental health contexts, measuring these constructs independently is critical. For instance, a severely depressed or traumatized individual may score exceptionally low on the SOBI-P (indicating acute feelings of rejection, lack of fit, and perceived worthlessness), while simultaneously maintaining a high SOBI-A score (indicating an intact, urgent longing to belong and be accepted). Conversely, an individual demonstrating social withdrawal combined with low scores across both subscales presents an entirely different diagnostic and therapeutic profile, characterized by motivational apathy, emotional blunting, or schizoid detachment.

In clinical practice, the SOBI serves as an invaluable diagnostic and evaluative tool across outpatient psychotherapy, psychiatric inpatient milieus, and suicide risk assessments. Substantial empirical literature links severe deficits in perceived belonging to the development and maintenance of major depressive disorder, anxiety states, borderline personality organization, and self-injurious behavior. In academic and organizational settings, the SOBI allows educators, counselors, and organizational psychologists to identify students or employees at risk of attrition, burnout, and profound disengagement due to institutional alienation or systemic marginalization.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the SOBI is grounded in Hagerty, Lynch-Sauer, Patusky, Bouwsema, and Collier’s (1992) comprehensive theoretical definition of Sense of Belonging: the experience of personal involvement in a system or environment so that persons feel themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment. This overarching construct is subdivided into two primary dimensions that represent distinct psychological realities:

5.1. Psychological Sense of Belonging (SOBI-P)

The psychological dimension of belonging reflects the direct cognitive appraisals, emotional states, and phenomenological perceptions of one’s relational status within social contexts, groups, families, and society at large. Within the SOBI-P, this construct is characterized by two fundamental cognitive-affective components:

• Valued Involvement: The subjective experience of feeling needed, accepted, valued, respected, and important to others. Individuals experiencing valued involvement believe that their presence matters, that their contributions are appreciated, and that their absence would be noticed and mourned. Examples include feeling that one’s personal thoughts and contributions carry weight, or conversely, feeling that one could disappear without consequence (e.g., Item 9: “I could disappear for days and it wouldn’t matter to my family”; Item 18: “I am not valued by or important to my friends”).
• Perceived Fit: The perceived congruence, harmony, or alignment between oneself and the surrounding environment, system, or peer group. Perceived fit captures whether an individual feels that their core self, values, and lifestyle harmonize with their social milieu. A severe deficit in perceived fit manifests as feelings of being a misfit, an outsider, an anomaly, or completely disconnected from the mainstream of human existence (e.g., Item 5: “I feel like a piece of a jig-saw puzzle that doesn’t fit into the puzzle”; Item 13: “I feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole”).

5.2. Antecedents to Sense of Belonging (SOBI-A)

The antecedents dimension represents the pre-existing psychological structures, foundational motives, and behavioral orientations that must be active for a sense of belonging to manifest. Antecedents do not represent belonging itself; rather, they reflect the individual’s psychological readiness, interpersonal capacity, and intrinsic valuation of social integration. The SOBI-A captures three foundational antecedent components:

• Energy and Desire for Involvement: The intrinsic motivation, emotional drive, and psychological energy invested into pursuing, cultivating, and sustaining social connections (e.g., Item 6: “I want to be a part of things going on around me”; Item 3: “It is important to me that I fit somewhere in this world”).
• Potential and Shared Characteristics: The individual’s perception that they possess inherent qualities, strengths, and interpersonal capacities that can be appreciated by others, alongside a baseline historical foundation of having felt valued in the past (e.g., Item 4: “I have qualities that can be important to others”; Item 2: “In the past, I have felt valued and important to others”).
• Behavioral Readiness and Adaptability: The individual’s proactive efforts and perceived competence to navigate interpersonal environments and successfully integrate into groups (e.g., Item 5: “I am working on fitting in better with those around me”; Item 9: “I can make myself fit in anywhere”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Sense of Belonging Instrument emerges from a synthesis of humanistic psychology, existential philosophy, psychodynamic attachment theory, and psychiatric nursing science. In their seminal theoretical paper, Hagerty, Lynch-Sauer, Patusky, Bouwsema, and Collier (1992) conducted an extensive concept analysis to demarcate “sense of belonging” from overlapping interpersonal phenomena.

Historically, the need for belonging was identified by Abraham Maslow in his classic hierarchy of needs, where belongingness and love occupied a pivotal tier situated directly above physiological and safety needs, serving as an absolute prerequisite for self-esteem and self-actualization. Concurrently, Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of psychiatry emphasized that human personality develops almost entirely within interpersonal relationships, arguing that psychological security arises from consensual validation and relational acceptance, whereas profound anxiety stems from the dread of social ostracism.

Expanding on these foundations, Hagerty and colleagues situated sense of belonging within a broader, systems-oriented nursing and psychological paradigm. They posited that an individual is continuously interacting with their social, interpersonal, and environmental systems. According to their model, belongingness is not a passive structural condition (such as marital status or employment status), but a highly dynamic cognitive-affective schema. This schema filters sensory and interpersonal inputs to assess two essential conditions: valuing and fit.

The theoretical framework delineates three distinct conceptual layers:

1. Antecedents: The internal psychological conditions necessary for belonging to occur. These include the psychological energy to seek relatedness, the cognitive capacity to recognize and interpret social signals, the desire for interpersonal communion, and the attribution of personal value to oneself. Without these antecedents, true belonging cannot be cultivated.
2. The Sense of Belonging State: The core experience consisting of perceived fit and valued involvement. This is an active affective-cognitive state that can fluctuate depending on contextual interactions, life transitions, and psychological integrity, but also stabilizes into an enduring trait-like orientation over time.
3. Consequences: The emotional, physiological, and behavioral outcomes of belonging. High sense of belonging fosters psychological well-being, resilience, positive affect, emotional security, and prosocial engagement. Conversely, the absence or disruption of belonging produces loneliness, social alienation, despair, anxiety, clinical depression, and in severe manifestations, the breakdown of the will to live.

This theoretical conceptualization directly aligns with later psychological models, such as Baumeister and Leary’s (1995) belongingness hypothesis, which asserted that human beings possess a pervasive, fundamental drive to form and maintain lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships. It also parallels Joiner’s (2005) interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidal behavior, which designates “thwarted belongingness” as one of two necessary psychological precursors for the development of suicidal ideation.

7. Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have firmly established the construct, criterion, convergent, and discriminant validity of both the SOBI-P and SOBI-A across diverse non-clinical, clinical, and cross-cultural cohorts.

7.1. Construct and Factorial Validity

During initial scale development, Hagerty and Patusky (1995) verified construct validity through comprehensive expert panel content evaluations, ensuring that every generated item mapped directly to the theoretical definitions of valued involvement, fit, and antecedents. Subsequent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses verified that the SOBI-P and SOBI-A represent distinct constructs rather than polar ends of a single continuum. The correlation between the two subscales across varied samples generally ranges from .32 to .48, confirming that while antecedents and psychological experiences of belonging share variance, they remain distinct psychological phenomena.

7.2. Convergent and Criterion Validity

Convergent validity has been rigorously demonstrated by comparing SOBI scores with standardized instruments measuring theoretically congruent and inversely related constructs:

• Depression: SOBI-P scores demonstrate robust, statistically significant negative correlations with validated depressive symptom measures, including the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (r = -.50 to -.68) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Lower scores on the SOBI-P consistently identify severe depressive symptomatology across community and psychiatric inpatient samples (Hagerty et al., 1996).
• Loneliness: Strong inverse relationships are consistently observed between SOBI-P and the UCLA Loneliness Scale (r = -.60 to -.78), demonstrating that a diminished sense of belonging is closely tied to profound emotional and social isolation.
• Social Support: Positive correlations have been established between SOBI-P and measures of perceived social support (e.g., the Personal Resource Questionnaire, PRQ-85; r = .50 to .62), confirming that individuals who perceive higher belonging also perceive greater social support.
• Self-Esteem: Strong positive correlations have been reported between SOBI-P and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (r = .55 to .71), indicating that feelings of valued involvement are deeply intertwined with self-worth.

7.3. Discriminant and Known-Groups Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing distinct clinical and non-clinical cohorts. Hagerty and colleagues (1995, 1996) demonstrated that the SOBI could clearly discriminate between:

1. Community adults without documented psychiatric histories,
2. College students experiencing normal developmental adjustment challenges,
3. Adult psychiatric outpatients undergoing treatment for major depressive or anxiety disorders, and
4. Psychiatric inpatients hospitalized for severe affective episodes or acute suicidality.

Psychiatric inpatients consistently demonstrated drastically lower SOBI-P scores (mean SOBI-P scores frequently dropping below 35) compared to non-clinical community controls (mean SOBI-P scores typically ranging from 55 to 62), confirming that the SOBI-P possesses exceptional clinical sensitivity to psychiatric distress.

8. Reliability

The Sense of Belonging Instrument demonstrates excellent internal consistency, stability, and precision across a wide spectrum of psychometric validation studies.

8.1. Internal Consistency Reliability

In the seminal psychometric validation study conducted by Hagerty and Patusky (1995), internal consistency was evaluated across five distinct participant samples (totaling over 1,000 participants), encompassing community adults, college students, psychiatric outpatients, and hospitalized clinical cohorts:

• SOBI-P (18 items): Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranged from .91 to .93 across all adult and clinical samples. Subsequent international validations (e.g., in Turkish, Korean, Spanish, and Dutch cohorts) have consistently mirrored these high metrics, reporting alpha values between .90 and .95. These values signify high inter-item homogeneity without problematic item redundancy.
• SOBI-A (9 items): Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the antecedent subscale ranged from .63 to .76. Because the SOBI-A evaluates three somewhat heterogeneous antecedent domains (desire, potential, and behavioral readiness) across a compact 9-item structure, this level of internal consistency is psychometrically acceptable and expected for multidimensional antecedent metrics.

8.2. Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

To establish the stability of the instrument over time, test-retest reliability was assessed across non-clinical college and community samples over assessment intervals spanning two to eight weeks:

• The SOBI-P demonstrated high temporal stability, yielding test-retest correlation coefficients of r = .84 (p < .001), indicating that the psychological sense of belonging functions largely as a stable cognitive-affective trait under regular life conditions.
• The SOBI-A yielded a test-retest correlation coefficient of r = .66 to .71 (p < .001), reflecting both stability and natural developmental responsiveness to interpersonal changes and motivational shifts.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the SOBI has been scrutinized using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to elucidate its internal structure.

9.1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During scale development, Hagerty and Patusky (1995) performed principal components factor analyses with orthogonal (varimax) and oblique rotations on the pooled item pool. The analysis supported splitting the scale into two separate instruments: the SOBI-P and the SOBI-A, as antecedent items loaded on factors distinct from experiential belonging items.

When evaluated independently:

• SOBI-P Structure: Factor analyses revealed two prominent, highly correlated factors explaining approximately 48% to 55% of the total variance:
1. Factor 1: Perceived Fit (accounting for the largest share of variance), with strong factor loadings (.52 to .81) from items emphasizing feelings of being a misfit, an outsider, a jigsaw piece that does not fit, or a square peg in a round hole (Items 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15).
2. Factor 2: Valued Involvement, with high loadings (.48 to .78) from items assessing relational significance, personal mattering, and emotional connection to friends and family (Items 4, 6, 9, 12, 16, 17, 18).
• SOBI-A Structure: The 9 antecedent items loaded across three related factors corresponding to:
1. Desire and Intention to Connect (Items 1, 3, 6, 7),
2. Recognition of Personal Qualities and Shared Strengths (Items 2, 4, 8), and
3. Adaptability / Behavioral Fitting (Items 5, 9).

9.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Subsequent structural equation modeling across international studies has confirmed that while a two-factor correlated model (Perceived Fit and Valued Involvement) provides an excellent empirical fit for the SOBI-P, a second-order global factor model is also highly supported, justifying the aggregate summation of all 18 items into a unified SOBI-P total score.

Structural fit indices reported across validation studies frequently meet or exceed conventional psychometric standards:

• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .045 to .062 (indicating close model fit).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .93 to .97.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .92 to .96.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .038 to .054.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Sense of Belonging Instrument is a multidimensional self-report inventory comprising two autonomous scales designed to be administered independently or in tandem:

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychological questionnaire.
• Target Population: Adolescents, college students, community-dwelling adults, and clinical psychiatric populations.
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes for the full 27 items.
• Total Item Count: 27 items (SOBI-P = 18 items; SOBI-A = 9 items).
• Response Scale: 4-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Agree
  • 4 = Strongly Agree
• Subscales:
  • SOBI-P (Psychological Belonging): 18 items measuring the direct cognitive-affective experience of valued involvement and perceived fit.
  • SOBI-A (Antecedents to Belonging): 9 items measuring the motivation, desire, potential, and behavioral readiness to achieve belonging.
• Scoring Instructions:
  • SOBI-P Reverse-Scoring: Seventeen of the 18 SOBI-P items are negatively worded to directly capture feelings of alienation, misfit, and non-involvement. Only Item 4 (“I generally feel that people accept me”) is positively phrased. Consequently, to compute the SOBI-P total score, Items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 must be reverse-scored (i.e., 1 = 4, 2 = 3, 3 = 2, 4 = 1). Item 4 retains its standard direct scoring (1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 3, 4 = 4). After reverse-scoring, sum all 18 items. Higher total scores reflect a stronger psychological sense of belonging. Total scores range from 18 to 72.
  • SOBI-A Scoring: All 9 items of the SOBI-A are positively framed and are scored directly (1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 3, 4 = 4). Sum all 9 items to yield the SOBI-A total score. Higher scores reflect greater readiness, motivation, and positive antecedents to belonging. Total scores range from 9 to 36.
  • Interpretation: SOBI-P and SOBI-A are not combined into a single grand score. They are interpreted side-by-side to construct a holistic interpersonal profile. Low SOBI-P (< 40) coupled with high SOBI-A (> 27) suggests thwarted belongingness accompanied by high distress, a configuration heavily implicated in severe depression and elevated suicide risk.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Sense of Belonging Instrument was originally published in 1995 by Dr. Bonnie M. Hagerty and Dr. Kathleen L. Patusky in the journal Nursing Research.

• Permissions and Academic Use: The SOBI was placed in the academic and clinical literature for open scientific and clinical non-profit investigation. Researchers and clinicians may utilize the scale in scholarly research, educational assessments, and non-commercial clinical evaluations without royalty fees, provided appropriate bibliographic citation is extended to the original authors.
• Commercial Applications: Any commercial redistribution, integration into fee-for-service proprietary software platforms, or publication within for-profit clinical testing packages requires formal permission from the copyright holder (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins / Wolters Kluwer Health, or the authors directly).
• Author Contact / Archival Access: Inquiries regarding large-scale implementations, translation protocols, and archival validation materials can be directed to the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Ann Arbor, MI, or retrieved through academic research repositories such as ResearchGate.

12. References

• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
• Hagerty, B. M., & Patusky, K. L. (1995). Developing a measure of sense of belonging. Nursing Research, 44(1), 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006199-199501000-00003
• Hagerty, B. M., Lynch-Sauer, J., Patusky, K. L., Bouwsema, M., & Collier, P. (1992). Sense of belonging: A vital mental health concept. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 6(3), 172–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/0883-9417(92)90028-H
• Hagerty, B. M., Williams, R. A., Coyne, C., & Early, M. R. (1996). Sense of belonging and indicators of social and psychological functioning. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 10(4), 235–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0883-9417(96)80026-6
• Hagerty, B. M., Williams, R. A., & Oe, H. (2002). Childhood antecedents of adult sense of belonging. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(7), 793–801. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.2007
• Joiner, T. E. (2005). Why people die by suicide. Harvard University Press.
• Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
• Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. W. W. Norton & Company.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)