Psychological sense of community: The study of SCI-2 scale in an association context

Olga Oliveira Cunha, José Ornelas, Maria João Vargas Moniz

Abstract


The Sense of Community is one of the fundamental concepts of Community Psychology. According to Seymour Sarason (1974), it is defined as the perception of belonging, interdependence and mutual commitment, gathering all individuals within a community. The model that has been defined by McMillan and Chavis (1986) comprises four dimensions: member status, integration and satisfaction of needs, influence and shared emotional relations. The research has sought to develop adequate measures for the psychological sense of community and in the present article it is the objective of the authors to present a translation and cultural adaptation of the SCI-2 developed by Chavis, Lee and Acosta (2008) to an associative context centered on its members Volunteers (n=811). The results have revealed that the factorial structure of the Sense of Community is in accordance with the proposed model by the authors, presenting a multi-dimensional structure and only 2 of the 24 items of the original scale were eliminated and its relevance to the original one is discussed. The resulting model allows analyzing and discussing community feeling in the context studied.

Keywords


Psychological sense of community, Scouting, SCI-2, Volunteering, Measuring.

References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14417/ap.1362

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