Does school connectedness differ by student ethnicity? A latent class analysis among Canadian youth

Latent class analysis was performed to identify clusters of items on the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health – School Connectedness Scale among students. Cluster membership was explored by student-reported ethnicity. The sample included students attending Canadian secondary schools in two waves of the COMPASS study: Years 4 (Y4:2015/16) (N=40,436) and 7 (Y7:2018/19) (N=60,610). Results were comparable across waves. Four clusters resulted: strongly connected (Y4 66.6%; Y7 67.9%), socially disconnected (14.1%; 15.2%; perceptions of equitable treatment but lacking feelings of belonging), social belonging (11.9%; https://doi.org/10.3%; feelings of being part of their school and close to others, but less likely to perceive equitable treatment), and weakly connected (7.4%; 6.6%). White and Asian students were more likely to be 'strongly connected', while Black and 'other' or mixed ethnicity students were overrepresented in the 'weakly connected' and 'social belonging' clusters. Cluster variations merit attention to improve how racialized and ethnic minority youth experience school environments.