The brief sense of community scale: Testing dimensionality and measurement invariance by gender among Hispanic/Latinx youth

TY - JOUR

T1 - The brief sense of community scale

T2 - Testing dimensionality and measurement invariance by gender among Hispanic/Latinx youth

AU - Lardier, David T.

AU - Opara, Ijeoma

AU - Cantu, Irene

AU - Garcia-Reid, Pauline

AU - Reid, Robert J.

N1 - Funding Information: Dr. Opara is supported with funding from the National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director (1DP5OD029636) and partial support from a National Institute of Mental Health education grant (R25‐MH087217). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (Grant No. SP‐151040). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Psychological sense of community is defined as feelings of belongingness and a shared belief that community members will meet one another's needs. Psychological sense of community has four dimensions: membership, influence, needs fulfillment, and emotional connection. In this study, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the first and second-order factor structure of the brief sense of community scale (BSCS) between male and female Hispanic/Latinx adolescents from an urban community (N = 947). To help validate the BSCS model, the second-order factor model was tested with regression to predict the measures of intrapersonal psychological empowerment and ethnic identity, as constructs conceptually related to psychological sense of community. Findings support that: (1) psychological sense of community can be measured through the BSCS and as a four-factor model among Hispanic/Latinx youth, supporting McMillan and Chavis's (1986) original theoretical discussions; (2) while no differences between genders were present at the model-level, there was path-specific variation; and (3) intrapersonal psychological empowerment and ethnic identity were associated with psychological sense of community.

AB - Psychological sense of community is defined as feelings of belongingness and a shared belief that community members will meet one another's needs. Psychological sense of community has four dimensions: membership, influence, needs fulfillment, and emotional connection. In this study, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the first and second-order factor structure of the brief sense of community scale (BSCS) between male and female Hispanic/Latinx adolescents from an urban community (N = 947). To help validate the BSCS model, the second-order factor model was tested with regression to predict the measures of intrapersonal psychological empowerment and ethnic identity, as constructs conceptually related to psychological sense of community. Findings support that: (1) psychological sense of community can be measured through the BSCS and as a four-factor model among Hispanic/Latinx youth, supporting McMillan and Chavis's (1986) original theoretical discussions; (2) while no differences between genders were present at the model-level, there was path-specific variation; and (3) intrapersonal psychological empowerment and ethnic identity were associated with psychological sense of community.

KW - Hispanic/Latinx adolescents

KW - brief sense of community scale

KW - confirmatory factor analysis

KW - gender

KW - psychological sense of community

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105007240&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22585

DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22585

M3 - Article

C2 - 33938003

SN - 0090-4392

JO - Journal of Community Psychology

JF - Journal of Community Psychology

ER -