Development of a sense of community scale for South Korean military personnel.

ABSTRACT

In this study, we developed and validated a scale that measures the sense of community among Korean military personnel. We conducted the research in three stages. In the first preliminary stage, we administered an open-ended questionnaire to 47 military officers in order to develop the initial questions. Experts verified the content validity of the 60 preliminary questions, and the questions were modified based on the experts' input. In the second preliminary stage, we extracted preliminary scales for 20 items based on the responses of 457 Army soldiers. In the third stage, we provided the preliminary scale to 656 Korean military personnel, and their responses were used to extract a five-factor matrix with 20 items. The five factors were Needs Fulfillment, Influence, Shared Emotional Connection, Rule Compliance, and Membership; each factor consisted of four items. Finally, after four weeks, we administered the scale to 208 additional military personnel, and the stability of the scale was confirmed, with a test-retest reliability of .90. To conclude the paper, we describe the implications of the scale developed in this study as well as directions for future studies.