Psychological Sense of Community in a Liberal Arts Environment
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Authors
Visco, Andrea
Issue Date
2007
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This study explores psychological sense of community (SOC) amongst students in a
small liberal arts college. Relevant literature shows that SOC can be divided into 4 major
categories for testing; integration and fulfillment of needs, influence, general
membership, and emotional connection. Three hundred thirty-three students completed
an adapted version of the sense of community index (SCI) for collegiate communities.
The adapted version of the SCI separated integration and fulfillment of needs into
academic needs and social needs. The experimenter hypothesized that the participating
college would score high in academic needs and group membership, low in social needs
and emotional connection, and mid-range for influence. The results showed that students
rated the fulfillment of their academic needs the highest, followed by general
membership, influence, social fulfillment, and finally, emotional connection. Since the
students reported feelings of satisfaction with the level of academic challenge at the
institution and comfortable with their feelings of belonging, the institution should focus
on improving the social aspect of the community. If the social aspect of the community
were to improve by the students standards it is likely that their feeling of emotional
connection would as well. The results also showed a significant change in SOC between
first year students and seniors which implies that there is a negative change that occurs
during the four years spent at the institution. It would be beneficial to the college to put
effort into finding possible reasons for the changes, in order to create more positive
feelings in students as they become alumni.
Description
iv, 39 p.
Citation
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License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.