Measuring sense of community in the military: cross‐cultural evidence for the validity of the brief sense of community scale and its underlying theory

Abstract

In this article, the authors present a German Sense of Community (SOC) Scale for use in military settings. The scale is based on the translation and field-testing of an existing U.S.-based measure of neighborhood SOC (Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008). The methodological intricacies underlying cross-cultural scale development are highlighted, as are the strategies used to overcome them. Administered in a navy context (n 5 270), the newly developed German measure improves the psychometric credentials of the existing scale by confirming the principal theory of SOC and its applicability across borders and contexts. Future research is encouraged to build on the strength and flexibility of the existing U.S. instrument for further cross-cultural scale development, thus enabling SOC theory to attain its full international potential. C

Revisiting the Sense of Community Index: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Invariance Test

“…On the other hand, Peterson et al () have developed a scale that supports McMillan and Chavis’ () four‐dimensional PSC model, and Wombacher, Tagg, Bürgi, and MacBryde () and Barati et al () have provided strong support for the Peterson et al scale. Likewise, Lin and Israel's () exploratory approach actually revealed a model consistent with McMillan and Chavis’ original model.…”

The Implicit Curriculum in an Urban University Setting: Pathways to Students’ Empowerment

“…Second, sense of community was assessed using three items asking students to indicate whether they had feelings of attachment to others in the school. Although existing theory (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) and previous research (Barati, Abu Samah, & Ahmad, 2012;Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008;Wombacher, Tagg, Burgi, & MacBryde, 2010) on sense of community have described and validated four dimensions of the construct (i.e., needs fulfillment, membership, influence, and emotional connection), we focused on the emotional connection dimension for this study and included three items (Cronbach's a = .94; M -5.59; SD = 1.29), which were answered using a 7-point Likert-type scale that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Third, participation in extracurricular activities within the school asked students to indicate which orga nizations and activities they engaged in during the last year.…”

Development of a Community Commitment Scale with Cross-sectional Survey Validation for Preventing Social Isolation in Older Japanese People

“…We generated an item pool (24 items) to measure CC using literature reviews [16,22-24,29,30] or our own raw interview data from previous study projects [31], that consisted of three dimensions: “concerns for the elderly” (8 items); “belonging and contribution”(8 items); and “cohesion and socializing” (8 items), to be tested with 4-point Likert-type scaling. The item pool was reviewed by 8 knowledgeable experts, including community health nurses or social workers, to check the face validity including the items’ clarity and proper reading level [32] and the 24 initial items were refined.…”

“…One aspect is traditional SOC measured by the BSCS developed in the United States [23,24] based on the theory of McMillan and Chavis [15]. The BSCS includes 8 items scored from 0 for “strongly disagree” to 4 for “strongly agree”, providing a range of 0 to 32.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that a high level of SOC related to favorable health measures [17,18], social support, or well-being [19-21] among residents in the community. Several SOC measures have been developed and their utility or validity tested [16,22-24], mostly in western countries.…”