16 BACK TO THEMES U NITE STUDENTS | APPLICANT INDEX REPORT | 2023 COMMUNITY 70 The Community score measures the orientation of the cohort towards being part of a student community, and the importance they place on this. There has been no change in the Community theme score overall since 2022, but some movement in the answers to specific questions. A sense of belonging at university is just as important to this year’s cohort, with the level of agreement at 81% (80% last year). This year, applicants are also more likely to want to be an active part of the student community, possibly because there are more opportunities to do so now that Covid restrictions are fully lifted. However agreement is less strong than last year when it comes to looking forward to making friends from different backgrounds. This may simply be because students have already had better opportunities than last year’s applicants to meet people from different backgrounds. Compared to last year they are much more confident about talking to people from different backgrounds (78% compared to 66% in 2022). This confidence is even higher among those who have done paid work, and it seems likely that greater opportunity to work and to socialise has both increased confidence and rendered diversity less of a novelty for this cohort. Female applicants are on average more community minded than male applicants, scoring more positively on almost all questions and with an average theme I would like to feel that I belong when I’m at university I look forward to making friends from different backgrounds *I have little interest in the social side of university I want to be an active part of the student community while I’m at university Figure 4: Breakdown of responses to community theme questions THEMATIC ANALYSIS - COMMUNITY 0% 100% 80% 50% 20% 90% 60% 30% 70% 40% 10% ■ Strong disagreement ■ Moderate disagreement ■ Neutral ■ Moderate agreement ■ Strong agreement *For this question, agreement indicates a negative response; the score for this question was reversed when calculating the index score. No change