ArticlePLOS mental health2024
The importance of belonging for well-being in college students.
Article in PLOS mental health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Effect of News Portal Use for Local News on Subjective Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Thwarted Belongingness and the Moderating Role of Self-Esteem.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Baseline Mentalization Predicts Depression and Alexithymia Following Brief Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Students Seeking Help at a University Clinic: A Pre-Post Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- "With a Little Help from My Friends": Co-Creating Belonging in Higher Education.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Student well-being: the impact of belonging, COVID-19 pandemic related student stress, loneliness, and academic anxiety.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The Seity Check-In: A novel tool for assessing momentary well-being.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
College students are vulnerable to mental health challenges that include depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. We examined how subjective well-being in 369 college students in the United States was affected by the number friends or family members who could provide essential needs (instrumental support) or with whom intimate or personal matters could be discussed (emotional support), the frequency of engaging with others, satisfaction with these engagements, and the sense of belonging. Engagement satisfaction was affected by emotional support and engagement frequency. Instrumental support had no significant effect, but this could be an artifact of our sample. Emotional support affected belonging, which in turn affected well-being. These results highlight the central role of belonging in establishing and maintaining well-being. Some characteristics may act as well-being risk or protective factors, but these effects are small; all students may experience low levels of well-being. We recommend that institutions monitor the well-being of their students and require participation in curricular and co-curricular activities that are intentionally designed to promote belonging and well-being.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.