PSSB · Perception of School Social Bonding
Measure why students show up — and where the bond is weak
Administer the validated ten-item PSSB instrument online. Each organization receives its own survey links, Attendance USA collects the responses securely, and your dashboard turns them into attachment, involvement and belief scores, group comparisons, and trends across administrations.
Pricing
$499 per survey administration
One administration is one survey window with unlimited student responses — a school, a grade band, or a whole district at once. Run another in the spring and the dashboard compares the two.
- Your own short link and printable instructions
- Anonymous responses, no student names collected
- Overall, Attachment, Involvement and Belief scores
- Breakdowns by grade, gender, age and race/ethnicity with significance tests
- Comparison across your administrations
- Raw-data CSV export for your own analysts
Invoice or purchase order? Write to info@attendanceusa.org.
The instrument
Ten items, three subscales, validated on 3,507 students
Developed by Dr. Carolyn S. Gentle-Genitty and validated with Keppens and Kearney (Contemporary School Psychology, 2025), the PSSB measures a student’s bond to school along Hirschi’s social-bond lines. Involvement and Belief scores are inversely associated with chronic absenteeism.
| Subscale | Items | Asks whether… |
|---|---|---|
| Attachment | 4 | Adults at school who care, notice, and encourage |
| Involvement | 3 | Taking part in and leading school activities |
| Belief | 3 | Effort, rules, and the value of school |
Read more about the instrument, its validation and APA PsycTESTS record on the PSSB page. The instrument is copyrighted; this service is the licensed way to administer it online.
How it works
Register
Create your organization account — a school, district, agency or program — and pay for an administration by card or invoice.
Create a survey
Name it (e.g. “Lincoln Middle — Fall 2026”). You receive a short link such as attendanceusa.org/s/ABC123.
Collect responses
Students complete the ten items and four optional background questions in about three minutes, on any device. No names are collected.
Read the dashboard
Scores, item detail, group differences with significance, and trends across administrations. Close the survey whenever you like.
What organizations see
A live example of the dashboard’s headline cards.
Illustrative figures. Your dashboard shows your own schools’ results and compares each administration with the ones before it.