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

Jörg Wombacher; Stephen K. Tagg; Thomas Bürgi; Jillian MacBryde

doi:10.1002/jcop.20388

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

Jörg Wombacher, Stephen K. Tagg, Thomas Bürgi, Jillian MacBryde

The York Management School

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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=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. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	671–687
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Community Psychology
Volume	38
Issue number	6
Early online date	13 Jul 2010
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20388
Publication status	Published - Aug 2010

Keywords

Community
Military
Cross-cultural
Theory
Social sciences (general)
Social psychology

Access to Document

10.1002/jcop.20388

Cite this

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title = "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=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. {\textcopyright} 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.",

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AB - 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=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. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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KW - Cross-cultural

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