Abstract

This paper describes the process of developing the 'Korean Sense of Community Scale', and the exploration of the structure of 'sense of community' in contemporary Korean society. In order to establish the theoretical concept of the sense of community, and to define the psychological areas that need to be measured, a literature review was done on three domains, the discussion on the philosophy of community, the psychological studies on the sense of community, and the empirical research on the community life and subjective well-being in Korea. In the process, a special attention was given to the distinction between the sense of community and authoritarian collectivism. Study 1 earned out an analysis of the sense of community in contemporary Korea empirically, and developed a sense of community scale based upon it. Item analyses of the pilot items revealed the major factors constructing the sense of community, and helped to select the items for the scale. The scale made of 24 items was found to have the reliability coefficient of .92. Study 2 was done to test the validity of the scale. The members of the 'Cooperative Childcare' which was found to be a very well-functioning community in a previous study were compared with the members of a more ordinary and not very close-knit day care facilities.. As predicted, the 'Cooperative Childcare' was found to have a significantly higher sense of community establishing the validity of the new scale.