Self‐efficacy and Citizen Participation in Neighborhood Council in Iran

Abstract

This article examines the effects of self-efficacy on citizen participation (N = 250) in neighborhood councils in Tehran, Iran. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the effects of self-efficacy on citizen participation. Results strongly supported the reliability and validity of the survey instrument. The findings revealed that 51% of the variance in citizen participation can be explained by self-efficacy. Citizens with higher self-efficacy are more likely to participate in neighborhood councils. C 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Revisiting the Sense of Community Index: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Invariance Test

“…On the other hand, Peterson et al () have developed a scale that supports McMillan and Chavis’ () four‐dimensional PSC model, and Wombacher, Tagg, Bürgi, and MacBryde () and Barati et al () have provided strong support for the Peterson et al scale. Likewise, Lin and Israel's () exploratory approach actually revealed a model consistent with McMillan and Chavis’ original model.…”

“…A very important exception is Peterson et al's () 8‐item Brief Sense of Community Scale (BSCS), which was tested and confirmed in Wombacher et al (). Barati, Samah, & Ahmad () provided further evidence of the BSCS's validity by showing it is correlated with citizen participation. Similarly, Lin & Israel's () effort to test Proescholdbell et al's () 17‐item sense of community scale falls into the same category as Chipuer and Pretty (1999). Because Proescholdbell et al offered a specific model, Lin and Israel should have used a confirmatory rather than an exploratory approach, and so have not really attempted a replication of Proescholdbell et al's model.…”

“…A very important exception is Peterson et al's () 8‐item Brief Sense of Community Scale (BSCS), which was tested and confirmed in Wombacher et al (). Barati, Samah, & Ahmad () provided further evidence of the BSCS's validity by showing it is correlated with citizen participation.…”

The Implicit Curriculum in an Urban University Setting: Pathways to Students’ Empowerment

“…Second, sense of community was assessed using three items asking students to indicate whether they had feelings of attachment to others in the school. Although existing theory (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) and previous research (Barati, Abu Samah, & Ahmad, 2012;Peterson, Speer, & McMillan, 2008;Wombacher, Tagg, Burgi, & MacBryde, 2010) on sense of community have described and validated four dimensions of the construct (i.e., needs fulfillment, membership, influence, and emotional connection), we focused on the emotional connection dimension for this study and included three items (Cronbach's a = .94; M -5.59; SD = 1.29), which were answered using a 7-point Likert-type scale that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Third, participation in extracurricular activities within the school asked students to indicate which orga nizations and activities they engaged in during the last year.…”

Validation of the Brief Sense of Community Scale among youth of color from an underserved urban community

“…More recently, the BSCS factor structure has been tested cross‐culturally among the German Military (Wombacher, Tagg, Bürgi, & MacBryde, ); among adults from Malaga, Spain (Hombrados‐Mendieta, Gomez‐Jacinto, Dominguez‐Fuentes, & Garcia‐Leiva, ); and in a musical community in Puerto Rico (Rivera‐Segarra, Rivera‐Medina, & Varas‐Diaz, ). Also, studies have deductively tested SOC among college and university housing students (Townley, Kloos, Green, & Franco, ) and among an Iranian Community Council in Tehran (Barati, Samah, & Ahmad, ) to name a few. These investigations further confirmed the factor structure of the BSCS among the sampled groups of adults and, importantly, provided validity and reliability for its cross‐cultural use.…”