Evaluating the Indirect Effect of Microaffirmations on Intersecting Marginalized Identities and School Sense of Belonging Among School Psychology Graduate Students

There is a discrepancy between the proportion of school psychologists identified as racially, ethnically, or linguistically diverse (REL) in the United States and the proportion of REL students they serve (Blake et al., 2016; Proctor & Owens, 2019). Current data estimates over 80% of school psychologists identify as white (Goforth et al., 2021), whereas more than 50% of U.S. public school students have non-white racial/ethnic identities (Irwin et al., 2024). In addition to increased recruitment of REL students to school psychology graduate programs, trainers in these programs must implement effective strategies to ensure retention. One method is to increase students’ sense of belonging to school. Research on university students shows a link between high sense of belonging and retention (Hoffman et al., 2002; Pedler et al., 2022). These feelings of value and acceptance may be tenuous for those whose identities are not well represented by others in their programs (Rainey et al., 2018). For those with multiple marginalized identities, belonging may be even more elusive (R. Williams et al., 2024). Microaffirmations, subtle messages of inclusion and support, may have the potential to negate low belongingness among REL students. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between graduate students’ marginalized identities and sense of belonging among school psychology graduate students in the United States and to assess whether microaffirmations acted as a protective factor. It sought to answer two research questions: Is a student’s sense of belonging affected by the number of intersecting underrepresented identities they possess? Do microaffirmations mediate the relationship between marginalized identities and belonging? This research examined survey data from 300 U.S. school psychology graduate students (Hulac et al., 2024). An analysis of variance test found a small (η2 = .077) but significant effect showing the more marginalized identities a student possessed, the lower their sense of belonging score. A conditional process analysis found a small mediating effect (R2 = .0682) of more targeted microaffirmations on this relationship but no mediating effect of microaffirmations as a broad construct. Implications and the potential for future research are discussed.