SCALE OF SOCIAL COHESION AT THE MUNICIPAL LEVEL OF CHILE: PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Background:Social cohesion concept and its association with others social phenomenahave received a renewed interest from academic view also public politics, however, themeasurement of social cohesion concept is complex. Our objective was to evaluatepsychometric proprieties of a scale to measure social cohesion at municipality level inChile.Method:Validity, reliability and dimensionality were analyzed. The analysis hadtwo steps: first, we applied an exploratory factor analysis (efa) with 310 participants;second, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (afc) with 784 participants. Par-ticipants came from different municipalities of region of Bío-Bío in Chile.Results:Theefashowed a poor fit to the theoretical dimensions, detecting second order factors andindependent factors.fcafound six final factors, two of them were second order level:«Sense of responsibility and collaboration towards the neighborhood/municipality»(ω= 0.92);«Sense of reciprocity of support and trust with close people»(ω= 0.90). Theother four independent factors were:«Support received by social organizations»(ω=0.87);«Trust in work of the authorities»(ω= 0.73),«Experiences of discrimination»(ω= 0.83),«Sense of Tolerance»(ω= 0.92).Discussion:the results confirm the multi-dimensionality of social cohesion concept. This instrument works as an inventory ofscales that account for this construct and it is useful to analyses from a non-normativeperspective of social cohesion.