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Sense of community and political participation
Author(s) -
Davidson William B.,
Cotte Patrick R.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6629(198904)17:2<119::aid-jcop2290170203>3.0.co;2-c
Subject(s) - politics , sense (electronics) , sense of community , sense of place , sociology , psychology , political science , social psychology , public relations , social science , law , engineering , electrical engineering
Current conceptualizations of sense of community suggest that this quality may be correlated with various forms of political participation. This notion was tested in the current study by measuring and computing relationships between sense of community and five different types of political participation: voting, campaigning, contacting political officials, working on public problems, and talking about politics. Indices of these political activities were further subdivided into those with local relevance and those with nonlocal relevance. Self‐report measures of sense of community and political participation were administered by telephone interview to 546 randomly selected respondents in Birmingham, Alabama. Results showed that sense of community was significantly related to voting, to contacting officials, to working on public problems, to local and nonlocal participation, and to an index of overall political participation. The findings are discussed.