University music club participation, belonging, identity development, and agency: an exploratory pretest-posttest study with attention to gender-marginalized students

This study examined whether participation in university music club activities was associated with students’ belonging, identity development, and agency, with exploratory attention to gender-marginalized students. Using a quantitatively dominant design supplemented by contextual qualitative materials, the study followed 288 undergraduate students from six universities and nine music-related student clubs across an 8-week activity cycle. A pretest-posttest survey design was employed, supplemented by brief activity feedback forms, short interviews, structured observations, and organizer logs. The results showed that belonging, identity development, agency, perceived recognition, and expressive safety all increased significantly over time, with small-to-moderate effect sizes. More frequent participation was positively associated with the three focal outcomes, while perceived recognition and expressive safety were also positively linked to students’ developmental and participatory experiences. Regression analyses indicated that identity development was most strongly associated with belonging and expressive safety, whereas agency was more directly associated with participation frequency and belonging. Bootstrapped indirect-effect analyses further suggested that perceived recognition and expressive safety may help explain associations between participation frequency and belonging, identity development, and agency, with expressive safety showing a particularly salient association with identity development. Supplementary analyses showed that gender-marginalized students reported consistently lower mean levels across the focal variables, although these differences did not reach statistical significance and should be interpreted as preliminary. Overall, the findings suggest that university music clubs may function as socially meaningful educational environments in which recognition, inclusion, and voice are supported through participation, while causal and subgroup claims should remain cautious.