I have authored a theory of sense of community that is of interest to community psychologists. This page contains the academic articles I have written about this theory.

If you can identify and isolate the elements in successful communities, you can apply them to develop any number of online communities. For years, we weren’t sure what those elements were. However, McMillan and Chavis’ 1986 article about Sense of Community changed that. This website defines the elements of a Sense of Community.

In 1974, psychologist Seymour Sarason's seminal book introduced the concept of "psychological sense of community," and proposed that it become the conceptual center for the psychology of community, asserting that psychological sense of community "is one of the major bases for self-definition" (p. 157). Quite a few studies have followed, and in addition to some treatment that has been characterized as fuzzy and atheoretical (cf., Pretty, 1990), some impressive theoretical and empirical development has emerged around this concept, which by 1986 had come to be regarded as a central overarching value for Community Psychology (Sarason, 1986; Chavis & Pretty, 1999).

Among theories of Psychological Sense of Community, McMillan & Chavis's (1986) is by far the most influential, and is the starting point for most of the recent research on psychological sense of community.

What is it that makes a community exist? They don’t just sprout up for no reason. There must be psychological justifications that explain what it is that brings people together.

A theory from the mid 1980s stands at the center of most sense of community understanding. In it, the authors describe four factors that work together to create sense of community (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). These four factors have been thoroughly explored in qualitative and quantitative research since then, and the theory is not only the most popular but relatively unchallenged.

This article revisits the theory of sense of community originally developed in 1976 and subsequently presented by McMillan and Chavis (1986). Chavis, Hogge, McMillan, and Wanders man (1986) demonstrated its empirical strength as a theory and developed the Sense of Community Questionnaire. This was essential work in getting the theory used. As reflected in the contents of this special issue, the theory has since stimulated considerable empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first seeks to illuminate some of the tensions between the rhetorical and ideological commitments of the discipline, and the primarily quantitative research methodologies it has traditionally employed. Second, a conversation analysis of the employment of a qualitatively inspired methodology the semi-structured interviewing researching “sense of community” suggests that the uncautious embrace of a qualitative paradigm, as an approach more rhetorically congruent with the values of the discipline, may entail as many problems as it resolves.

The Sense of Community Index (SCI) is the most frequently used quantitative measure of sense of
community in the social sciences. The SCI is based on a theory of sense of community presented by McMillan and Chavis (1986) that stated that a sense of community was a perception with four elements: membership, influence, meeting needs, and a shared emotional connection