Perceptions of community life which distinguish between participants and nonparticipants in a neighborhood self‐help organization

Questionnaire, Edwards-Kirkpatrick scale, and semantic differential techniques were used to provide converging measures of psychosocial factors affecting participation in a community self-help organization. This group is attempting to maintain the racially mixed residential character of a neighborhood located in a zone of transition between large tracts of project housing and an area of stores, apartment buildings, and offices on the edge of a southern center city. Results indicate that a complexly integrated set of attitudes toward the area as a place to live, one's neighbors as active and potent yet stable people, and the future as a promising and secure time of life seems to determine attitudes toward and participation in the community organization.