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Ali Eryılmaz & Fatma Altınsoy
Introduction
Sense of belonging is generally the most basic requirement for individuals (Baumeister
& Leary, 1995). When the individuals are respected and accepted by other people or
institutions, their senses of belonging are satisfied (Hagerty et al., 1992). There are var-
ious contexts in which the sense of belonging is experienced. School is one of those
contexts. The fact that the students feel that they belong to the school is examined
by the concept of belonging to school. The feeling of belonging to school is a feeling
regarding to what extent the student is respected and accepted by the individuals at
school, gets involved in a group within the context of school and receives support.
is supported. In other words, belonging to school refers to the students’ considering
themselves as an important parts of their schools (Goodenow, 1993). There are many
factors which affect the sense of belonging to school. Satisfaction of needs might be
an important one. In parallel with the increase of the belonging to school, the sense
of being functional increase in many aspects such as attendance to lesson, attend-
ing the school, subjective well-being and academic achievement (Bergin and Bergin,
2009; Ma, 2000; Maddox & Prinz, 2003; Neel & Fuligni, 2013; Pittman and Richmond,
2007; Tian et al., 2016). On the event that the students’ senses of belonging to school
decrease, many negative results are encountered such as school dropout, academic
failure and tending to harmful substances, aggression and bullying (Goodenow, 1993;
Goodenow and Grady, 1993; Maddox and Prinz, 2003; Osterman, 2000). Results of
the study reveal that it is necessary to increase the students’ belonging to school.
The need satisfaction can be one of the factors which positively affect the students’
belonging to school. In conclusion, the aim of the present study is to examine the re-
lationship between the high school students’ belonging to school and satisfying their
psychological needs.
Method
The aim of the present study is to examine the relationships between the high school
students’ belonging to school and satisfying their psychological needs. The individuals
to whom measurement devices shall be applied have been determined by purposive
sampling. In purposive sampling, the researcher identifies a sample based on the pre-
vious universe-related theoretical information and their own knowledge and special
purpose of the study (Büyüköztürk, Kılıç-Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz and Demirel,
2008; Fraenkel and Wallen, 1993). In the present study, among the purposive sampling
types, Maximum Variation Method was adopted for determining the research group.
The participants were chosen considering the state of studying at an Anatolian High
School, not being diagnosed in a psychiatric disorders and being 15 and 17 years
of age. The data collection tools, used within the scope of the study, were applied to
