Sense of Belongingness and Mental Well-being: The Mediating Role of Perceived Social Support among College Students from Tea Plantation Communities

Higher education constitutes a vital route for social advancement among marginalized youth. This study examines the mediating role of social support on the relationship between sense of belongingness and mental well-being among college students of tea plantation communities in Kerala, India. A cross- sectional study is adopted in this research. Sample comprises of 200 college students (133 males, 67 females) from tea plantation communities. Participants represented different academic levels including undergraduate (66.5%), postgraduate (30.0%), and doctoral (3.5%) across multiple institutions. Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (α = .91), Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (α = .89) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (α = .93) are used to collect the relevant data. Hayes’ approach with 5,000 bootstrap re-samples is uses in the mediation analysis. The result revealed that, there is moderate to high level scores on all three constructs among participants: Sense of belongingness (M = 52.40, SD = 4.23), mental well-being (M = 37.06, SD = 2.52), and perceived social support (M = 31.16, SD = 3.75) and also very strong positive correlation exists between all three variables (r = .851-.917, p < .001). Additionally, sense of belongingness significantly predicts mental well-being (β = 0.538, p < .001) and perceived social support (β = 0.814, p < .001). Bootstrap analysis confirms there is a significant indirect effect of mediation = 0.085, 95% CI [0.019, 0.185]. Perceived social support significantly mediates 15.8% of the total effect. The study concludes that, Perceived social support significantly mediate the relationship between Sense of belongingness and Mental well-being among college students of tea plantation communities. The study also highlights the importance of academic related interventions supporting marginalized college students.