Escala De Cohesión Social a Nivel De Municipios en Chile: Análisis Psicométrico

Abstract

Background: Social cohesion concept and its association with others social phenomena have received a renewed interest from academic view also public politics, however, the measurement of social cohesion concept is complex. Our objective was to evaluate psychometric proprieties of a scale to measure social cohesion at municipality level in Chile. Method: Validity, reliability and dimensionality were analyzed. The analysis had two steps: first, we applied an exploratory factor analysis (efa) with 310 participants; second, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (afc) with 784 participants. Participants came from different municipalities of region of Bío-Bío in Chile. Results: The efa showed a poor fit to the theoretical dimensions, detecting second order factors and independent factors. fca found 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). The other 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 multidimensionality of social cohesion concept. This instrument works as an inventory of scales that account for this construct and it is useful to analyses from a non-normative perspective of social cohesion.Recibido 17 de septiembre de 2020 y aceptado 20 de noviembre de 2021 INTRODUCCIÓNChile se encuentra en una de las regiones más desiguales del mundo, y además es uno de los países más desiguales de América Latina (Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos [ocde], 2015; Amarante & Colacce, 2018;Picketty, 2019). Esta realidad permite tener una mayor compresión del proceso de fractura social que se evidencia, con mayor fuerza, con el Estallido Social de octubre del año 2019, y que devela el malestar, producto de las desigualdades percibidas y la desconfianza instalada, con la consiguiente interpelación que la ciudadanía realiza a la autoridad, principalmente política (Aravena & Baeza, 2015). Es en este contexto, mundial y nacional, donde la cohesión social, entendida a grandes rasgos como los vínculos que