A student’s college experience includes relationships that they establish at the two-year or four-year university that they attend. The purpose of this study is to identify personal and institutional characteristics of transfer student-athletes that have significant associations with sense of belonging. In addition, the study seeks to determine whether transfer student-athlete sense of belonging differs from other student populations, which are native student-athletes, transfer students who are not student-athletes, and native students who are not student-athletes. To learn more about transfer student athletes, the following research questions will guide this study: 1) For transfer student-athletes, what proportion of the variance in sense of belonging can be explained by personal characteristics and institutional characteristics? 2) How do transfer student-athletes differ from other student populations based on sense of belonging? This study is important because administrators, faculty, and coaches should understand how transfer student-athletes compare to the other student groups that make- up the general student population. The research findings from this study are that personal characteristics and institutional characteristics did not explain any of the variance in sense of belonging for transfer student-athletes when compared to transfer student non-athletes, native student athletes, and native student non-athletes. However, after reviewing the sample data that was used for this research, there were several factors that this researcher believes might have contributed to the results.
