0:00:00.2 Sally Laskey: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Sally Laskey, NSVRC's Evaluation Coordinator. On today's episode, I talk with researchers Iris Cardenas, a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at Rutgers University and Dr. Jordan Steiner about research tools that define and measure a person's sense of community and their study that examined the cultural relevance of one specific tool with non-Hispanic black and Hispanic college students. [music] 0:00:54.9 SL: Welcome to Resource on the Go, Iris and Jordan. I'm so glad you could join us today. 0:01:01.3 Iris Cardenas: Thank you for having us. This is great. 0:01:03.9 Jordan Steiner: Thank you so much for having us. We're really excited to be here. 0:01:07.2 SL: Well, could you each share a little bit about yourselves for our listeners? 0:01:12.2 IC: Sure, so Sally mentioned, I am a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at Rutgers University. My research focuses on gender-based violence among diverse populations, particularly in the Hispanic or Latinx communities, and I am especially interested in the provision of cultural legal importance services and cross-cultural skill validation. And what that means is you're validating your skills with different cultural groups. I also have extensive practice experience working in health care studies and providing in-home and community-based services, which now enforce my research practice. 0:01:50.9 JS: Yeah, and I recently graduated with my PhD in social work. My educational background is in both social work and education, and I've worked in refugee immigrant humanitarian Wisconsin services, sexual and gender-based violence research, as well as an evaluator for sexual violence prevention. As a result of these experiences, my specific evaluation and research interests focus on gender-based violence with the particular focus on diverse cultural communities, as well as refugee and immigrant communities, linguistic justice, and international populations in context. 0:02:25.6 SL: Well, we are so thrilled to have you both here as we've been focusing more and more on community level prevention and conditions that buffer against the risk for sexual violence perpetuation. We've been talking more and more about the protective nature of having a strong sense of community, as well as community connectedness. I'm a community psychologist, so of course, I'm always looking at things from the community level and how we're building community strengths, but for a lot of people, this very abstract concept of sense of community can be hard to get a handle on, but I know that you and other researchers have been working to both define and measure it. Iris, could you share a brief overview of how sense of community is defined in the research literature? 0:03:21.3 IC: Yeah, of course. So first, we can think of sense of community as referring to a collective experience, and it's also often referred to as a psychological sense of community, because there is an emotional aspect to the whole experience of feeling sense of community. And so sense of community or psychological sense of community represents the strengths of connection among community members. And there are several slightly variations of sense of community definitions and scales to measure it in the literature, but the most widely used and the one we use in our study is the one by McMillan and Chavis, and I believe it was from 1986, they present a sense of community as having four different components, group membership, needs fulfillment, emotional connection, and influence. 0:04:12.5 IC: And so just very briefly, needs fulfillment refers to the belief that members' needs will be met by their community. Group membership refers to a sense of interpersonal relatedness or feeling of belonging. Influence is the feeling that one matters and can make a difference in their community, while also the community matters to its members. And then finally, emotional connection, it's the a sense of bonding entrenched in members' shared experience, beliefs, and history. And so these this different components of sense of community are measured in the brief sense of community still, the one that we use in our study, and that one was developed by Dr. Andrew Peterson, who is also our co-author in the study we did. So the brief sense of community scale is short. It has a total of eight questions. It has two questions measuring each component of sense of community that I just mentioned, and so it's very practical and convenient for researchers and practitioners really. 0:05:19.6 SL: Well, thank you for grounding us in the definition and letting us know a little bit about this particular scale. So tell me, how did your research study develop? 0:05:30.4 JS: Sure, so we were working on sexual assault research and realized that scales assessing sense of community on campus really had not been validated with students of color and diverse populations. So we were really interested in understanding if sense of community with students of diverse cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds were reflected the same as among other campus students, and we really understood how critical it was to validate the scale among non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics, understanding how much culture may influence sense of community. We really wanted to contribute to the scales used for interventions for research and evaluations, assessing campus community with a particular focus on diversity and culture. 0:06:17.8 IC: That's right. I also remember around that time I had met with Dr. Peterson for another project, and a conversation developed about his scale, the brief sense of community scale, and how it is being used widely and validated with different populations here in the United States, but also around the world. We also talked about this scale being used with communities of color, and how only one study had validated the scale thus far for youth of color, but no one had actually tested that skill specifically across Hispanics, non Black and then Black youth. So this is how the study emerged, and we also wanted to thank Dr. Sarah McMahon for allowing us access to the data so that we actually were able to do this study. 0:07:10.7 SL: That's wonderful, and I will too acknowledge a huge thanks to Sarah as well, who is a member of the NSVRC's advisory council, and has helped connect us with a lot of researchers over the year, so thank you for bringing both Dr. Peterson and Dr. McMahon into the space with us today. So can you jump in and tell us more about your study? 0:07:37.9 IC: Yeah, I'll give a bit of a background first, so that is clear what we did in the study. So as I mentioned, the brief sense of community skill was developed to measure this abstract concept, an emotional aspect of a human experience. We also note that the cultural influences that we as people understand and interpret everyday experiences, so there is a possibility that people from different cultures think of sense of community differently. So perhaps having different components or having a whole different meaning. For example, if we think of individualistic and collectivist cultural groups, people from a collectivist culture may understand the need fulfillment dimension of sense of community as more of a collective effort to achieve ones goal than the community functioning to meet the individual's needs. 0:08:30.0 IC: So this might be because collectivism encourage group over personal well-being. So since we know that the culture influences the way we interpret concepts, in our study we wanted to do two things. So first, we wanted to assess whether the scale, the brief sense of community scale, measures what it's supposed to measure, so if it really measures a sense of community. And then we wanted to evaluate whether this sense of community concept is equivalent across the two groups, so non Black Hispanics and Blacks. So in our work we wanted to know if these two different groups give the same value to the four components of sense of community, if they understand and interpret the questions in the same way, and then a couple of other details, a bit more technical, but essentially the goal of our study was that, to know if there's an equivalent meaning for both groups, and we think it's important because it has serious implications for practice. 0:09:37.2 JS: Right, so just really to add with Iris has said, in our research we are looking at the groups, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic differently. Usually researchers are not looking at those group differences. 0:09:48.1 SL: Oh, I see, that is critical. So tell me what did you learn from your study. Jordan, could you start us off with some of the key highlights? 0:10:00.1 JS: Sure, so we essentially found that the brief sense of community scale is valid for students of color, specifically non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic students, meaning that it's capturing the same meaning for a sense of community for students of color. And so this research really helps emphasize the importance of sense of community for the two different cultural groups, based on racial ethnic identities. And so basically what this is all saying is that it shed light on the fact that if we are using scales that are not validated with diverse communities as researchers, evaluators, practitioners and student populations then assessing interventions outcomes really might not be as effective. So by testing these scales in the way that we did, we can assess scales and assess outcomes, and help evaluate scales for use with different groups and with sense of community. 0:10:51.9 IC: Yeah, exactly. We learned that Hispanics and Blacks, at least in our study, construe and understand sense of community in the same way, despite being from different cultures. And I think this is exciting because it not only means that there is an essence to feeling sense of community, feeling belongingness, connectedness, feeling valued that transcends cultures, but it's also very promising for programming with our dues and the overall community. 0:11:22.3 SL: It is, and I'm wondering, how do you think this research can support and inform those working specifically to prevent sexual assault, abuse and harassment? Our listeners would be really interested in learning how the brief sense of community scale could be a tool in their program evaluation efforts. 0:11:43.8 JS: Sure. Great question. Really, the practice-based question, and I believe that this specific research in collaboration with Iris and Dr. Andrew Peterson can really help researchers, evaluators and practitioners, better understand and emphasize the need for programming and interventions, related to community connections with students and youth of diverse cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as really illustrate the importance of considering this in-scale development and implementation. Also, it may be particularly useful in the intentionality and consideration of thinking about different cultural values in scale development and validation. 0:12:23.7 JS: For example, individualistic collectivist values and considering sense of community among diverse student populations. Also, I really think that program evaluators working on campus connection efforts as well as working with community-level sexual violence prevention on college campuses can and should feel confident in utilizing the brief sense of community scale for assessing a sense of community among non-Hispanic black and Hispanic students. If this really had not been validated in the study, program evaluators working on campus sexual violence prevention efforts really might not feel as comfortable with utilizing the scale and the tool, and even more than this, I think that this process and the scale, the tool, may remind program evaluators to be intentional in going into program evaluation work by seeking to understand diverse cultural values and perspectives, and therefore making sure scales and assessments are as appropriate as possible for culturally diverse populations. 0:13:25.2 SL: That's such a great point, Jordan. And so key, the being intentional and thoughtful throughout our entire program development and evaluation efforts are where we need to put our energy. So what do you think, are some future directions, for the study of this concept? 0:13:49.6 IC: So I think that there are many ways that we could move forward this study. So first, the sense of community and specifically the brief sense of community scale have been validating several populations, right, among several populations. But testing the equivalence of the meaning of this concept is rarely done and I think that this is what Jordan was talking about earlier. So I would like to see more studies not only testing whether the brief sense of community scale is measuring what it's supposed to measure, but also whether there is meaning equivalence across groups. This is important because very often we compare groups, right, for example, if we want to determine which group needs more programming to increase sense of community or whether a specific program is positively incurs in sense of community. So how can we truly compare the groups if we don't know that what we're measuring is equivalent or the same thing for these different groups? Another direction, I will also very much like to see this scale being validating in Spanish. I think it will be very interesting to determine whether sense of community is thought of the same way among Hispanic, Spanish-speaking people, since they form a different cultural group as well. So, I think that will be super interesting. 0:15:18.1 JS: I totally agree with everything that Iris has said. And just to add one more point, now moving forward, we really wanna make sure that the field is utilizing and testing tools with people and students of color to make sure common skills are culturally applicable. I think that's really moving forward the direction that our work should be going in. 0:15:39.9 SL: Well, I co-sign both of your recommendations for our way forward. I thank you both so much for being guests today, sharing your research, but I'll also let our listeners know that you've provided us with other key research pieces which we're gonna include in our show notes, for people to be able to learn more. We'll provide more information about your specific article in the Journal of community Psychology on our website as well. And I'm just excited that we'll be able to hopefully keep this conversation going in some future podcast. So thank you both for your time and thank you for being part of Resource on the Go. 0:16:24.4 IC: Thank you, Sally. 0:16:26.2 JS: Thank you so much Sally. [music] 0:16:38.1 Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go. We would like to give a special thank you to the Center on Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) at Rutgers University for their support of collaborative research and evaluation projects, as well as, the tools they have allowed us to share through this podcast. For more resources and information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website at www.nsvrc.org. Need help accessing research on this topic? Connect with us by email emailing resources@nsvrc.org.