Community trust: The Scale of Community Action Orientation (CAO)

This study is based on the hypothesis that a sense of belonging and identification with one’s own territorial community does not perform a decisive role in social participation and action (Arcidiacono, 2004; Arcidiacono, Procentese, & Di Napoli, 2007). It proposes orientation towards the community as a specific dimension in order to explain the active bonds between individuals and their local context. This study particularly aims to investigate individual and collective action for the improvement of the community. Recent theoretical and methodological contributions (Long, Perkins, 2003; Zampatti, Prezza et al 2007; Arcidiacono et al., 2007), have broadened and deepened our understanding of the psychological aspects of the community’s hold on the individual (Mc Millan, Chavis, 1986), by investigating the reciprocal relationship between a territory and its inhabitants. Furthermore, we have constructed a scale of orientation towards the community (CAO scale) in order to understand how young people invest in their local context and conduct future planning on both a personal and collective level. The sample analyzed consists of 686 interviewees, from 18 to 29 years old, all of whom reside in the city of Naples and its surrounding areas. The outcomes obtained by Cronbach’s Alpha suggest that the scale has a good level of internal validity. Furthermore, we conducted a comparative analysis between the Orientation to community action scale and Puddifoot’s Community Response Questionnaire scale (1995), as well as the Italian Version of Keyes’s Wellbeing Scale (Cicognani et al., 2001), which confirmed the independence of the instrument. The findings of the research, in line with Fisher and Sonn (2002), Scabini (2004) and Arcidiacono (2004), tend to suggest that Community Trust is a useful construct for explaining social action and orientation towards the community.