Convergent and divergent validity of the scale of Sense of Community in Online Courses

Introduction Sense of Community (SC) refers to the perception of similarity and strong interdependence with others and feeling of being a member of a stable group. In online courses, SC affects the quality of student learning. Nevertheless, few valid tools are available to measure it. Based on the main SC model by McMilan and Chavis (1986), the Scale of Sense of Community in online Courses (SSC-CO) has been recently developed (Authors, 2015). The SCC-CO was made up of 43 items which are organized into 3 factors: Membership; Fulfillment of needs and goals achievements; and Influence. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate convergent and divergent validity of the 3 factors of the SCC-CO. Design/Methodology Three hundred and twenty-one students attending online courses provided by several Italian Universities completed the SSCC-CO. One hundred and fifty-seven of them filled out also the Italian Scale of Sense of Community (Prezza et al., 1999) and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al., 1988). The remaining 164 participants filled out also the Classroom Community Scale (Rovai, 2002) and the Social Identity Questionnaire (Cameron, 2004). While the ISSC and the CCS are both scales of SC, the MSPSS and SIQ are scales assessing constructs in relation to SC. Results Correlations between each of the SSCC-CO factors and the other two scales of SC were high enough to suppose that the three instruments measure the same construct (coefficients ranged from .47 to .79; mean = .67). Moreover, they were lower than the correlations between each of the SSCC-CO factors and the two scales of close but distinct constructs (coefficients ranged from .32 to .70; mean = .49). Conclusions Results show that the 3 factors of SSCC-CO are valid in discriminating SC from other similar constructs.