Development and initial validation of a brief 2-item measure of belonging among student physical therapists in the United States: a psychometric validation study

Purpose: The objectives of this study were to develop a 2-item abbreviated version of the Program Sense of Belonging questionnaire (ProSBq) and to evaluate its ability to identify student physical therapists with relatively low valued competence and social acceptance.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using survey data from 634 students enrolled in physical therapist education programs across the United States. The 10-item ProSBq was used to assess 2 dimensions of belonging: valued competence and social acceptance. Principal component analysis was performed to identify representative items for each subscale, with 1 item selected per subscale. Pearson product-moment correlations were used to examine relationships between the single items and their corresponding subscale scores. Classification performance was evaluated by assessing how accurately the single-item responses classified students reporting a relatively low sense of valued competence and social acceptance, based on their full ProSBq subscale scores. Multiple single-item response thresholds were examined to assess classification accuracy.Results: The single items demonstrated strong relationships with their corresponding subscale scores (r=0.63–0.80, with part-whole correction). For valued competence, sensitivity increased from 53.6% to 92.9%, whereas specificity decreased from 96.3% to 73.5% when a more inclusive threshold was used. A similar sensitivity-specificity tradeoff was observed for social acceptance. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses demonstrated excellent discrimination (area under the curve ≥0.90).Conclusion: Single ProSBq items demonstrated strong relationships with full valued competence and social acceptance subscale scores and acceptable classification performance. The abbreviated 2-item ProSBq may provide a practical and efficient method for identifying students experiencing low valued competence or social acceptance.