Empowerment and sense of community: clarifying their relationship in community organizations.
The research reported here tested the factor structure of a measure for sense of community in community organizations, and it evaluated sense of community's potential as an empowering organizational characteristic within an organizational empowerment framework. Randomly selected community organization participants (N=561) were surveyed as part of a study of a substance abuse prevention initiative located in the northeastern United States. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the putative structure of the sense of community measure tailored to community organizations. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that community organization sense of community significantly predicted intrapersonal empowerment after controlling for demographics, participation, alienation, and other empowering organizational characteristic. Findings imply that organizational sense of community should be considered as an empowering organizational characteristic in community-based health education.
Hughey
Joseph
J
University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA. hugheyj@umkc.edu
Peterson
N Andrew
NA
Lowe
John B
JB
Oprescu
Florin
F
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D019058:Community Networks; D003256:Community Participation; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003255:Consumer Organizations; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012918:Social Alienation; D012933:Social Identification; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult