SoC Measures

The concept of social capital is becoming increasingly common in community psychology and elsewhere. However, the multiple conceptual and operational definitions of social capital challenge its utility as a theoretical tool. The goals of this paper are to clarify two forms of social capital (bridging and bonding), explicitly link them to the structural characteristics of small world networks, and explore the behavioral and ecological prerequisites of its formation.

A variety of sense of community measures have been developed, but the identification of latent factors in developed scales to measure this construct has encountered significant psychometric problems involving reliability and validity. We present a new measure called the Psychological Sense of Community Scale, which is based on three distinct ecological domains involving the individual, microsystem, and macrosystem. We used an exploratory factor analysis to investigate our three theoretical domains involving Self (identity and importance to self), Membership (social relationships), and Entity (a group’s organization and purpose). Three theoretically derived factors emerged with good measurement model fit, internal reliabilities, and convergent validity. Our study also found multiplicative over additive effects, suggesting each of the three domains is necessary to understand the experience of sense of community. This scale can be adapted to a variety of contexts and situations in future research.

Settings that have ecological variables that instill hope might be particularly effective for treating individuals with substance use disorders. More specifically, trust and sense of community could be of importance in the fostering of hope among individuals in recovery from substance use disorders. Our study included a sample of individuals who were living in or had lived in Oxford House recovery homes. We found that both sense of community and trust are ecological aspects of settings that had important influences on hope, because an engaged individual tends to value trust relationships. Perceptions of the house operating effectively was positively related to individuals’ assessment of the house as a good setting, but the house was not perceived to be as effective when the residents were not invested in the setting. The sense of community self factor was the best predictor of hope, suggesting that individuals’ personal investment in their house community are related to their hopefulness in terms of goal attainment and opportunities. Associations of hopefulness, personal commitment, and a supportive ecology provide evidence that an individual’s perspective on recovery encompasses personal, environmental, and temporal perceptions.

A critical concept in the community psychology has been the sense of community. One of the better known instruments developed and evaluated to measure this construct is the Sense of Community Index (SCI: Perkins, Florin, Rich, Wandersman, & Chavis, 1990). The present research examined the unidimensional SCI’s measurement properties with an adult population (n = 662; M age = 38.4) recovering from substance abuse and residing in Oxford House recovery residences. Overall, the SCI exhibited sufficient reliability as a unidimensional instrument, but lacked reliability as a theoretical four factor model. It did, however, demonstrate an invariant 3 factor latent structure relating to rationale for connection (7 items), social bonds (3 items), and personal importance (2 items). Race was found to be associated with personal importance. In addition, personal importance was predictive of the likelihood of remaining a resident in Oxford House. The implications of these findings for the field of resilience are discussed.

This study assessed the psychometric properties of the Perceived Sense of Community Scale (PSCS). Psychological sense of community is a construct that has been developed primarily in the field of community psychology and deals with the feelings of connectedness, group membership, and need fulfillment that members of small groups or larger communities may have toward other members. The current research explores this concept in the evaluation of Oxford Houses, residential homes designed to provide mutual support to individuals recovering from substance abuse and dependence, through the use of the PSCS. Overall, the PSCS was a multidimensional scale exhibiting a cluster of negatively phrased items with a large number of highly loading items. Within the three-factor structure, two factors were nearly perfectly correlated, and neither sex nor race bias affected the initial formulation. However, sex and race were significant (but of small magnitude) covariates n a later sample, and highly reliable subscales were formulated with five items. Taken together, the PSCS was capable of performingas an acceptable measurement model in latent analysis.

Previous researchers found that abstinence-specific self-efficacy has been predictive of the likelihood of relapse for individuals in recovery from substance abuse. Oxford Houses are sober living homes that provide mutual support and are resident funded and operated. The relationships between house level sense of community and abstinence-specific self-efficacy were examined in the present study with a sample of 754 adults living in 139 Oxford Houses nationwide in a multilevel model. A significant positive relationship between house level sense of community and self-efficacy was observed. These findings have both research and therapeutic implications. 

One hundred and thirty-three male addicts and alcoholics completed psychometric measures of psychological sense of community, stress, social support, and hope. Factor analysis of item responses (Varimax rotation) on the sense of community scale produced a three-factor solution, with Factor 1 (12 items) labeled Mission, assessing the perception that one is actively engaged with others in the pursuit of a common purpose; Factor 2 (12 items) labeled Reciprocal Responsibility, referring to the perception that there are acknowledged members of an ongoing group who are mutually responsible to each other; and Factor 3 (6 items) labeled Disharmony, representing dissatisfaction with aspects of community experience. The resulting composite scale was significantly correlated with a standardized measure of social support, and serves to measure the psychological sense of community construct beyond the context of local residence.