The Psychological Sense of Community in the Neighborhood

Many urban problems are blamed on a declining sense of community. To assess such claims and to learn how policies affect sense of community, we need a reliable and valid measure for the construct. This paper describes the development and testing of an 11-item Likert scale of the sense of neighborhood community, using responses from 54 residents in three suburbs in Columbus, Ohio. One test of the scale with 100 residents in single-use and mixed-use areas near one another found significantly more sense of community in the mixed-use neighborhood. More sense of community emerged among married persons and couples with children as compared to singles and childless couples. A test with 32 renters in neighboring apartment buildings, one with an outdoor courtyard and the other with an interior double-loaded corridor, found significantly more sense of community in the courtyard building. Scores agreed with two other measures associated with community: number of neighbors known by name, and number of friends in the buildings. We recommend further testing in other contexts.