Replication Data for: A Scale Development Study for the Determination of Students' Sense of Belonging to Place

A sense of belonging to a place is a significant phenomenon that shapes individual identity, fosters social cohesion and enhances psychological well-being. It also influences behaviours and cultural connections that support community resilience and environmental stewardship. It can be defined as the connection, attachment and identification that an individual or group experiences towards a specific place or space. This study aimed to develop a scale that measures adolescents’ sense of belonging to a place. Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted to achieve this objective. EFA was conducted with 398 student’s 8th grades from ten different schools in Türkiye. The resulting scale comprises three sub-dimensions and a total of 26 items. The initial 14 scale items loaded onto the factor measuring 'local belonging'. Items 15 to 20 loaded onto the factor measuring 'national belonging', and items 21 to 26 loaded onto the factor measuring 'global belonging'. Students' sense of belonging to a place was measured using a 5-point Likert scale. The three-factor structure accounted for 46.15% of the total variance. Findings from the CFA indicated that the fit index values were acceptable and excellent when the maximum likelihood technique was employed with data obtained from 250 students. The Cronbach's alpha values for the subscales were as follows: Local belonging: 0.93; national belonging: 0.94; global belonging: 0.94; and the overall scale: 0.93. The high values obtained in this study confirm the reliability of the scale at both sub-scale and total scale levels