The Short Scale Affiliation to Own Degree Program<\/strong> (known in its original German development as the Kurzskala Zugehörigkeit zum eigenen Studiengang<\/em>, abbreviated as ZeS<\/strong>) is an 8-item self-report psychometric instrument designed to assess students’ perceived belonging, social connectedness, and emotional identification with their specific academic major or degree program. Developed in response to the growing need for economic instruments capable of evaluating academic integration across diverse pedagogical delivery modes—including face-to-face, hybrid, and remote or online tertiary education—the ZeS captures a multidimensional construct rooted in classic social and educational psychology paradigms. Rather than measuring generalized institutional attachment to an overarching university, the ZeS specifically captures affiliation at the proximal, departmental, or degree-program level.<\/p>\n The instrument comprises two correlated yet distinct subscales: Well-Being<\/strong> (Wohlbefinden<\/em>; five items), which gauges feelings of interpersonal safety, peer acceptance, and collaborative comfort within the degree cohort; and Pride<\/strong> (Stolz<\/em>; three items), which evaluates affective identification, positive valence in self-disclosing one’s field of study, and public representation of the academic program. Items are rated on a symmetric 6-point Likert scale<\/a> ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree<\/em>) to 6 (Strongly agree<\/em>), eliminating a neutral midpoint to minimize central tendency bias. Psychometric evaluation across two independent student samples (Item Selection Sample: N<\/em> = 97; Evaluation Sample: N<\/em> = 110) demonstrated robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha<\/a> coefficients reaching α = .79 to .81 for Well-Being and α = .81 for Pride across both cohorts. Principal axis factor analyses with oblique rotation corroborated the hypothesized two-dimensional structure, accounting for 50% to 55% of the total variance. Convergent validity was established via meaningful positive associations with dispositional pride, discriminant validity was verified across the Big Five personality dimensions<\/a>, and criterion validity was demonstrated through moderate associations with global life satisfaction. Requiring approximately one minute to complete via computer-assisted self-administered interviewing (CASI), the ZeS provides higher education researchers and administrators with a brief, empirically validated measure of academic micro-climate connectedness<\/span>.<\/p>\n Sense of belonging, degree program affiliation, higher education, academic well-being, academic pride, student retention, institutional integration, psychological measurement, scale validation, exploratory factor analysis, online learning environments, university students.<\/p>\n The Short Scale Affiliation to Own Degree Program (ZeS) was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated in 2021 by a research team of psychometricians and educational psychologists in Germany specializing in higher education diagnostics and social relationships in educational settings. Development and open-access dissemination were completed through standard psychological repository documentation (including Open Science Framework protocols and institutional survey development initiatives) to facilitate broad empirical application in university evaluation and academic engagement research.<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the ZeS is to provide an efficient, psychometrically sound measurement tool that captures undergraduate and graduate students’ emotional and social affiliation with their specific field of study. In modern higher education research, the construct of student belonging has emerged as a cornerstone of student retention, psychological resilience, academic achievement, and mental health. However, preexisting measurement instruments in the tertiary education domain—such as the instruments developed by Hoffman et al. (2002) or national quality indicators like the Australian Student Experience Survey (Social Research Centre, 2021)—predominantly focus on macro-level institutional affiliation (i.e., belonging to the university as a whole) and are predominantly available only in English. Institutional measures often fail to capture the immediate, day-to-day relational dynamics that occur within specific academic departments, seminars, and cohort groups.<\/p>\n The ZeS fills this critical methodological gap by shifting the psychometric lens to the meso- and micro-levels of academic life: the individual’s specific degree program (Studiengang<\/em>). Academic degree programs serve as primary socialization hubs where students form peer networks, develop professional identities, collaborate on intellectual tasks, and experience departmental climate. A student may feel alienated by a massive university administration yet experience profound camaraderie and professional validation within their specific major, or vice versa.<\/p>\n From an applied perspective, the ZeS is engineered for:<\/p>\n Because the scale contains only eight items and requires approximately 60 seconds to complete, it incurs virtually zero respondent burden, making it exceptionally well-suited for high-frequency pulse surveys, longitudinal panel studies, and expansive multi-cohort institutional surveys.<\/p>\n The psychological construct assessed by the ZeS is Affiliation to One’s Own Degree Program<\/strong> (Zugehörigkeit zum eigenen Studiengang<\/em>). Drawing from classical socio-psychological definitions, the construct represents a student’s psychological need and subjective experience of feeling emotionally and socially connected to their specific course of study, identifying with its academic community, and experiencing authentic well-being within its social ecosystem.<\/p>\n Theoretical and empirical analyses conducted during the scale’s development established that this affiliation does not operate as a strictly unidimensional construct, but rather crystallizes into two distinct, correlated psychological dimensions:<\/p>\n The Well-Being dimension encompasses five items tapping into the interpersonal, relational, and emotional comfort experienced in the social environment of the degree program. It assesses the extent to which a student feels accepted, socially embedded, and psychologically safe among fellow cohort members. Key facets of this dimension include:<\/p>\n The Pride dimension consists of three items reflecting the affective and identity-relevant evaluation of the study program. It captures the degree to which enrollment in the program enhances the individual’s self-worth, serves as an aspirational marker of self-concept, and stimulates enthusiastic outward representation. Key manifestations include:<\/p>\n The conceptual foundation of the ZeS is anchored in three primary theoretical paradigms within psychological and educational science: the Belongingness Hypothesis<\/em>, Social Identity Theory<\/em>, and Models of Student Integration<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to the seminal formulation by Roy Baumeister<\/a> and Mark Leary (1995), the “need to belong” is a fundamental, universal human motivation characterized by a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships. To satisfy this drive, two criteria must be satisfied: (a) frequent, affectively pleasant or neutral interactions with a few other people, and (b) these interactions must take place in the context of a temporally stable and enduring framework of mutual concern and caring. The ZeS directly operationalizes these criteria within the academic setting: the Well-Being subscale captures the presence of supportive, stable interactions and mutual caring, while the Pride subscale reflects the emotional value derived from inclusion within this stable collective.<\/p>\n Formulated by Henri Tajfel<\/a> and John Turner<\/a> (1979, 1986), Social Identity Theory<\/a> posits that an individual’s self-concept is shaped substantially by their perceived membership in relevant social groups. In higher education, a student’s academic discipline or specific degree program serves as a primary social in-group. Identification with this in-group generates collective self-esteem, which manifests emotionally as academic pride<\/em>. When students strongly categorize themselves as members of a respected discipline, external disclosure of their major activates group-derived self-worth, motivating positive outward representation and reinforcing psychological affiliation.<\/p>\n In educational sociology and psychology, Vincent Tinto’s (1975, 1993) longitudinal model of institutional departure highlights that academic persistence is contingent upon successful integration into both the academic and social systems of the institution. While academic integration involves meeting structural performance benchmarks, social integration involves informal peer-group interactions, semi-formal extracurricular participation, and positive interactions with faculty. The ZeS measures the core subjective output of social integration at the degree level. Concurrently, Self-Determination Theory<\/a> (Deci & Ryan, 2000) posits that the psychological need for relatedness<\/em>—feeling connected to, cared for, and belonging with significant others—is essential for autonomous motivation and psychological vitality. When the degree environment satisfies relatedness needs, students experience elevated subjective well-being and reduced burnout.<\/p>\n The psychometric validity of the ZeS was evaluated comprehensively across content, factorial, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related dimensions using two successive empirical investigations.<\/p>\n Initial item generation utilized a bottom-up lexical approach combined with student focus group consultations and theoretical frameworks on educational social relationships (e.g., Hagenauer & Raufelder, 2020). Items were constructed to avoid double negatives, linguistic ambiguity, and convoluted syntax. A pretest confirmed broad comprehensibility. The conceptual coverage of belonging through the distinct lenses of well-being and pride aligns with empirical literature outside higher education; for instance, Kröske (2020) and Hommerich and Tiefenbach (2018) verified moderate-to-strong linkages between subjective well-being and community belonging in secondary education and civic environments, while Hinding et al. (2012) substantiated the intrinsic coupling of collective pride and organizational affiliation.<\/p>\n Convergent construct validity was evaluated in the Evaluation Sample (N<\/em> = 110) by correlating ZeS subscale scores with the Pride subscale of the German-translated Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale<\/em> (DPES; Shiota et al., 2006). The ZeS subscales exhibited statistically significant, moderate positive correlations with general dispositional pride<\/span>:<\/p>\n Because the ZeS Pride subscale evaluates domain-specific academic pride rather than a generalized personality trait of self-aggrandizement, moderate (rather than near-unity) correlations were theoretically anticipated, confirming convergent alignment without conceptual redundancy.<\/p>\n Discriminant validity was established against the Five-Factor Model of personality<\/a> measured via the ultra-short German BFI-2-XS<\/em> (Danner et al., 2016):<\/p>\n Criterion-related validity was examined against global life satisfaction using the German version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale<\/em> (SWLS; Janke & Glöckner-Rist, 2012). Both subscales demonstrated robust, statistically significant predictive associations with life satisfaction:<\/p>\n These findings substantiate the empirical reality that social and emotional integration within one’s immediate educational track constitutes a salient predictor of overall psychological flourishing during young adulthood.<\/p>\n The internal consistency of the ZeS was evaluated separately for both dimensions across two distinct empirical student cohorts using Cronbach’s alpha<\/a> (α).<\/p>\n2. Keywords<\/h2>\n
3. Authors<\/h2>\n
4. Purpose<\/h2>\n
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5. Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Well-Being within the Degree Program (Wohlbefinden innerhalb des eigenen Studiengangs<\/em>)<\/h3>\n
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2. Pride Regarding the Degree Program (Stolz gegenüber dem eigenen Studiengang<\/em>)<\/h3>\n
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6. Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
The Belongingness Hypothesis<\/h3>\n
Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization<\/h3>\n
Tinto’s Student Integration Model and Self-Determination Theory<\/h3>\n
7. Validity<\/h2>\n
Content Validity<\/h3>\n
Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
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Criterion Validity<\/h3>\n
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8. Reliability<\/h2>\n
Reliability Estimates<\/h3>\n