ESCALA DE COHESIÓN SOCIAL A NIVEL DE MUNICIPIOS EN CHILE: ANÁLISIS PSICOMÉTRICO

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