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Measuring perceived community support: Factorial structure, longitudinal invariance, and predictive validity of the PCSQ (perceived community support questionnaire)
Author(s) -
Herrero Juan,
Gracia Enrique
Publication year - 2007
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/jcop.20143
Subject(s) - psychology , sample (material) , confirmatory factor analysis , social support , exploratory factor analysis , construct (python library) , construct validity , population , structural equation modeling , community integration , social psychology , measurement invariance , longitudinal study , clinical psychology , statistics , psychometrics , medicine , computer science , mathematics , environmental health , chemistry , chromatography , programming language , physical therapy
Social support from intimate and confiding relationships has received a great deal of attention; however, the study of the community as a relevant source of support has been comparatively lacking. In this article, we present a multidimensional measure of community support (Perceived Community Support Questionnaire, PCSQ). Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on data from three samples of adult population (two‐wave panel: sample 1, N = 1009 and sample 2, N = 780; and an independent sample 3, N = 440), results show that community integration, community participation, and use of community organizations are reliable indicators of the underlying construct of perceived community support. Also, community support is associated with a reduction of depressive symptoms after 6 months, once autoregression is controlled for. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.