Psychological Sense of Community

in Groups on the Internet

Peter M. Forster
University of the South Pacific, Fiji

Psychological sense of community (PSOC) was studied within two types of vir-
tual community and one type of community of place. Fifty-six members of these
community groups completed the Sense of Community Index (SCI). An analysis of
variance found partial support for the initial hypotheses with the intentional-
community-of-place group scoring significantly higher on the SCI than the loca-
tion-oriented virtual community. The results were discussed in the context of 3
PSOC correlates of depth of disclosure, reciprocity and shared interests/experience.
It was concluded that virtual communities may contribute to overall PSOC.

W hile describing Psychological Sense of Community (PSOC), Sarason (1974)

proposed it as a defining value for community psychology. He also developed the
theme, common to many observers of contemporary western societies, of a decline in
this feeling in US society, with corresponding increases in loneliness, isolation and
alienation. Nisbet (1962) maintained that communities of place (formed by those who
live and/or work in geographically-bounded spaces) were losing, or had lost, their abil-
ity to serve as a focus for a sense of community because of our greater than previous
ability to select our communities. Crump (1977, p. 1, as cited in Glynn, 1986)
addressed this theme and described western urban-dwellers as having ‘portable personal
communities’ that are detached from specific locations. Decline in PSOC was discussed
by Glynn in terms of the contrast between communities of place and communities of
interest (professional organisations or virtual communities, for example). Royal and
Rossi (1996) connected these ideas and asserted that the significance of communities
of place had declined while that of community as a relational phenomenon had grown.
The aim of the present study was to measure PSOC in two types of Internet groups
(which are often described as virtual communities) and compare them to an equiva-
lent type of community of place, intentional communities.
The concept of portable, self-selected communities can be applied to the net-
works and groups with which people communicate via telecommunications equip-
ment and computer networks, such as mobile phones and the Internet. Virtual
communities sustained entirely by the use of such media were predicted by Licklider
and Taylor (1968), research directors of the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA), the Department of Defense, who helped create the precursor to the
141
Internet, the ARPANET. Licklider and Taylor forecast that communities of
common interest would replace those of place.

Address for correspondence: Lytse Mar 40, 8523 NN, Idskenhuizen, the Netherlands.
E-mail: pmforster@yahoo.com

Behaviour Change | Volume 21 | Number 2 | 2004 | pp. 141–146

 Peter M. Forster

The communication channels used by virtual communities have different char-

acteristics from face-to-face channels and are the likely cause of some of the differ-
ences in behaviour seen in virtual communities and in communities of place. These
characteristics include the richness of cues a medium conveys (for example,
whether a medium conveys text alone, or whether it includes additional visual and
auditory cues), the visibility or anonymity of the participants (e.g., videomail versus
voicemail; whether communications identify the sender by name, gender, title, and
so on), and the timing of exchanges (e.g., synchronous or asynchronous communi-
cation). A reduction in cues has been held to be responsible for less-inhibited
exchanges (e.g., flaming), increased participation of peripheral workers, decreased
status effects and longer decision processes (Eveland, 1993; Eveland & Bikson,
1988; Finholt & Sproull, 1990; Garton & Wellman, 1995; Huff, Sproull, & Kiesler,
1989; Rice, 1994; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991).
Despite such differences, can virtual communities evoke a similar PSOC as
communities of place? McMillan and Chavis (1986) propose that the same ele-
ments or dimensions of PSOC are present in both communities of place and of
interest. The four dimensions of PSOC proposed by McMillan and Chavis are
membership or the feeling of belonging, influence or the feeling of mattering, inte-
gration and fulfilment of needs through membership in the group, and a shared
emotional connection. Although this is one of the most widely used models, as Hill
(1996) pointed out, research studies do not all agree that these are the elements or
dimensions of PSOC. She also pointed out that there is little agreement about the
correlates of PSOC.
Forster (2001) established that, for some people, participation in Internet
groups was providing a rich and meaningful experience of community that was an
important part of their lives. However, that paper did not establish whether this
was a common experience or applied to only those respondents. Wellman and
Gulia (1996) review evidence on the quality of person-to-person relationships
within virtual communities and conclude that intimate relationships are possible.
However, this still leaves open the question of the actual sense of community that
may exist within particular virtual communities.
Narrative descriptions of PSOC by community participants quoted in Forster
(2001) suggest that high levels of PSOC may be experienced by participants in
health-oriented Internet groups, in which membership is restricted to those with
health problems and their families. The same study suggested that participants in
Internet groups that are devoted to specific locations might also experience high
levels of PSOC. The present study attempted to gain a better understanding of the
PSOC in Internet groups by inviting members of two types of Internet group —
virtual communities devoted to health issues and virtual communities devoted to a
place — to complete the most widely used measure of PSOC; the Sense of
Community Index (SCI, Chavis, Hogge, McMillan, & Wandersman, 1986). The
type of community of place chosen as a comparison to the virtual communities was
142 that of intentional communities. These are communities of place that were formed
usually to achieve utopian political, social or religious ideals. As virtual communi-
ties are also intentional communities, intentional communities of place are more
appropriate as a basis for comparison than the more usual urban or suburban neigh-
borhoods, which could be described as accidental communities.
If predictions were based solely on the responses of participants in the Forster
(2001) study, it might be expected that the three groups evoke a similar and high

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 Psychological Sense of Community on the Internet

PSOC — some respondents in each group were obviously deriving a strong sense of
community from participating in the group. However, the health-oriented Internet
groups appear to have high levels of three features of close-knit communities:
greater depth of disclosure between community members, number of shared inter-
ests/experience and reciprocity between community members (Cutler, 1995).
Participants in the Internet group devoted to a place (Hawaii) focus discussions on
external factors, such as the environment and ethnic groups of Hawaii, and so are
characterised by little depth of personal disclosure. Discussions in the group are
kept on-topic by the moderators (the main function of the moderators of Usenet
groups generally) and therefore the levels of shared interest are maintained at a
high level. The intentional communities of place contacted for this study are char-
acterised by high levels of these three factors. Because they share the same physical
location, members of intentional communities of place have opportunities for more
types of interaction than are available to participants in virtual communities. This
leads to the following prediction: mean SCI scores for the three groups will be
intentional communities of place > health-oriented virtual communities > loca-
tion-oriented virtual community.

Method
Participants
Fifty-six participants took part in this study, 31 female, 24 male and 1 not specified.
Seven were younger than 30 years of age, 22 were between the ages of 30 and 44
years, and 27 were older than 44 years. There were 18 participants in the inten-
tional communities of place group, 20 in the health-oriented-virtual-communities
group and 18 in the location-oriented-virtual-community group.

Sense of Community Index

The SCI consists of 12 items to each of which participants reply ‘true’ or ‘false’.
Examples of items include: (a) ‘I think my [block] is a good place for me to live’
(score 1 for ‘true’); (b) ‘People on this [block] do not share the same values’ (score 1
for ‘false’); (c) ‘I feel at home on this [block]’ (score 1 for ‘true’). Total SCI is a
score out of 12. The scale has an internal reliability coefficient of .80 (Chipuer &
Pretty, 1999). Support for the construct validity of the SCI as a measure of PSOC
has been established and reported by Chipuer and Pretty. The scale takes about five
minutes to complete.
In the original version of the SCI, the place reference in the 12 items was
‘block’. For the two Internet groups, this reference was changed to ‘Internet group’
and for the intentional community groups it was changed to ‘community’. For the
Internet groups, the word ‘neighbor’ was changed to ‘group member’ and for the
intentional communities it was changed to ‘community member’. For the Internet
groups, the word ‘live’ was changed to ‘participate’. The subscales of the SCI (mem-
bership, influence, reinforcement of needs and shared emotional connection) have 143
been shown to lack reliability (Chipuer & Pretty, 1999) and were not used.

Groups
The intentional communities of place that were sent invitations to participate were
the Findhorn and the NewBold House communities in the United Kingdom,
Kibbutz Tzora in Israel, Sirius and Twin Oaks in the USA, and ZEGG in Germany.

Behaviour Change
 Peter M. Forster

The health-oriented virtual communities that were sent invitations were the
cancer and the autism mailing lists. The location-oriented virtual community was
the Usenet online discussion forum soc.culture.hawaii.

Procedure
The method used to find participants varied with the group. To contact the mem-
bers of the Usenet group soc.culture.hawaii, permission was first sought from one of
the moderators of the group to post an invitation. On receiving permission, the
invitation message, which gave a brief description of the study, of the SCI question-
naire and its location on the web, and a guarantee of confidentiality, was posted.
Those who chose to participate could click on the web address of the questionnaire
and complete it online. On completion, the form was emailed automatically and
anonymously to the author. To contact the members of the health-oriented
Internet mailing lists, permission was first sought from the list owners to post an
invitation. The same invitation message as for the Usenet group was then posted
into the mailing lists and participants completed the questionnaire in the same
way. To contact members of the intentional communities, the invitation message
was sent either to the community’s e-mail reception address with a request to pass it
to members of the community or, when the community members published their e-
mail addresses, the invitation was sent to them directly. This group was not
directed to a web site to complete the questionnaire. Instead, they were sent the
questionnaire as an e-mail attachment to complete and return by e-mail or post, as
they preferred. All participants chose the e-mail option.

Results
The means (and standard deviations) of the SCI scores for the three groups were as
follows: intentional community of place = 9.7 (2.2), health-oriented virtual com-
munity = 8.3 (2.8) and location-oriented virtual community = 7.2 (2.4).
A one-way, between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to assess the sig-
nificance of these differences. There was a statistically significant difference
between the three groups, F(2, 55) = 4.3, p = .018. Planned comparisons indicated
that the mean score for the intentional community of place group was significantly
different from the location-oriented virtual community, F(1, 53) = 8.6, p = .009.
Planned comparisons between the intentional-community-of-place group and the
health-oriented-virtual-community group, F(1, 53) = 3.00, p = .087, and between
the two virtual-community groups F(1, 53) = 1.6, p = .211 failed to reach signifi-
cance, although the means were in the predicted direction.

Discussion
The model of PSOC developed by McMillan and Chavis (1986) proposes that indi-
viduals can have a sense of community simultaneously from several settings. This
144 study supports the idea that virtual communities may contribute to an individual’s
overall PSOC. Even the group with the lowest SCI score in the present study, the
location-oriented virtual community, had a mean SCI score similar to that found in
urban neighborhood groups (see Pretty, Andrewes & Collett, 1994, for example).
This study found only partial support for the initial hypothesis. Respondents
living in intentional communities have significantly higher PSOC than members
of the location-oriented virtual community. However, they do not have significantly

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 Psychological Sense of Community on the Internet

higher PSOC than members of the health-oriented virtual communities studied here
and the latter do not score significantly higher than place-oriented virtual communi-
ties, although the means are in the predicted direction. We assume that the SCI is
sensitive enough to distinguish the PSOC of these three groups, so what could
account for these results? It may be that personal judgement is not sufficiently accu-
rate for assessing the three factors of disclosure, reciprocity and shared interests/expe-
rience and that the three groups are not as distinguished on these factors as assumed
here. Hill (1996) raises the possibility that the correlates of PSOC may be setting-
specific, so the three factors identified here as correlates of PSOC may make differen-
tial contributions to the three groups studied. More work on the correlates of PSOC
in virtual communities is needed to adequately address this issue.
It may be that the three factors of disclosure, reciprocity and shared interests/
experience may account for the differences observed in this study, but that other
factors need to be taken into account in the study of PSOC in virtual communities.
Other factors not considered here are known to be associated with PSOC. For
example, SCI scores are correlated with length of time in the community (Pretty,
Andrewes, & Collett, 1994). For example, if community longevity contributes dif-
ferentially to PSOC by enhancing communality in high-disclosure groups more
than in low-disclosure groups, then greater differences may have been obtained if
only long-standing community members had been selected. Similarly, it may take
time for a community member to assess the degree of reciprocity in the community
so that it is related to PSOC only for longer-term community members.
It is possible that differences between the groups may have reached signifi-
cance if more participants had been recruited. This was not possible for the groups
studied here. Finally, it is worth mentioning that all participants in this study were
volunteers and may not be representative of the complete membership of their
respective communities.
Studies of PSOC have not yet developed to the point where clear conclusions
can be drawn about either its dimensions or correlates. It is likely that more
progress would be made if the most commonly used tool for measuring PSOC, the
SCI, had reliable subscales, so that in the context of this study, for example, we
could better understand the similarities and differences between the communities.
However, we have at least been able to establish that virtual communities can
evoke a high sense of community from their members. As the popularity of virtual
communities increases, the need to understand their properties, costs and benefits
also increases.

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