Virtual Community Cohesion: a Proposed Measurement Instrument

  • Authors

    • Noriadah Yusop
    • Zahurin Mat Aji
    • Zulkhairi Md Dahalin
    https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i3.20.28408
  • Virtual Community, Community Cohesion, Cohesion Instrument, Scale Construction, Instrument Development.
  • Virtual community has become one of the interaction platforms that allows interactions among members of the community and thus could become a mechanism for a more established and broader relationship. The existence and prosperity of both physical and virtual community depends very much on cohesiveness among its members. Community cohesion is a popular concept that is used to describe the strength of human relationships and the stability of a more differentiated society. Prior study has been conducted to identify more inclusive indicators for the nine dimensions of a cohesion measurement framework as to come up with a reliable instrument for physical social cohesion. Based on the developed instrument for physical social cohesion, out of the nine dimensions, seven that are pertinent to virtual community are retained or revised: Trust in multi-ethnicities, Willingness to cooperate, Shared common values, Involvement in decision-making, Voluntarism, Safe-guard members, and Roles of administrator. Another study was then conducted to determine the indicators for the seven dimensions as an instrument for virtual community cohesion. Hence, this paper aims to elaborate on the development of the proposed instrument for measuring virtual community cohesion. The construction of the instrument is based on the seven steps of scale development and analysis namely Item Generation, Content Adequacy Assessment, Questionnaire Administration, Factor Analysis, Internal Consistency Assessment, Construct Validity, and Replication. However, only results up to the fifth step were included in this paper and the results suggest that the components that are significant to measure the virtual community cohesion are Perceived Members’ Influence, Members’ Characteristics and Community Participation. To confirm this, it is suggested that the subsequent steps be performed.

     

  • References

    1. [1] Hill, W., Stead, L., Rosenstein, M., & Furnas, G (1996). Recommending and Evaluating Choices in a Virtual Community of Use, ACM.

      [2] Lee, F. S., Vogel, D., & Limayem, M. (2002, January). Virtual Community Informatics: What we Know and What we Need to Know. In System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 2863-2872). IEEE.

      [3] Chewar, C. M., McCrickard, D. S., & Carroll, J. M. (2003). Persistent Virtual Identity in Community Networks: Impact to Social Capital Value Chains.

      [4] Shakeel PM. Neural Networks Based Prediction Of Wind Energy Using Pitch Angle Control. International Journal of Innovations in Scientific and Engineering Research (IJISER). 2014;1(1):33-7.

      [5] Chang, H. H., & Chuang, S. S. (2011). Social capital and individual motivations on knowledge sharing: Participant involvement as a moderator. Information & management, 48(1), 9-18.

      [6] DiFranzo, D., & Graves, A. (2011, June). A Farm in Every Window: A Study into the Incentives for Participation in the Windowfarm Virtual Community. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Web Science Conference (p. 14). ACM.

      [7] Zhou, T. (2011). Understanding Online Community User Participation: A Social Influence Perspective. Internet research, 21(1), 67-81.

      [8] Zulkhairi, M.D., Nor Iadah, Y., Huda, I., Zahurin, M.A. and Mohd Khairudin, K. (2014a). A Construct on Fostering Unity through Virtual Community Cohesion. In Proceedings of the 7th Knowledge Management International Conference (KMICe 2014), 548-553. 12-15 Aug 2014, Langkawi.

      [9] Tan, C. H., Sutanto, J., & Tan, B. C. (2015). Empirical Investigation on Relational Social Capital in a Virtual Community for Website Programming. ACM SIGMIS Database, 46(2), 43-60.

      [10] DiFranzo, D., & Graves, A. (2011, June). A Farm in Every Window: A Study into the Incentives for Participation in the Windowfarm Virtual Community. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Web Science Conference (p. 14). ACM.

      [11] Kosmides, P., Adamopoulou, E., Demestichas, K., Remoundou, C., Loumiotis, I., & Theologou, M. (2014, December). Community Awareness in Academic Social Networks. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (pp. 647-651). IEEE Computer Society.

      [12] Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:†Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168.

      [13] Ma, M. (2005). IT Design for Sustaining Virtual Communities: An Identity-Based Approach (Doctoral dissertation).

      [14] Wright, R. & Sarker, S. (2009). Individual Factors in Virtual Teams: A TIP Theory Perspective. AMCIS 2009 Proceedings. Paper 625. http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2009/625.

      [15] Chen, M., Zhou, J., & Zhao, L. (2008, December). The Effect of Virtual Community Culture and Group Cohesion on Knowledge Sharing: A Case Study of Professional Virtual Community. In Computer Science and Software Engineering, 2008 International Conference on (Vol. 5, pp. 105-108). IEEE.

      [16] The Statistics Portal (2017). Number of Social Media Users Worldwide from 2010 to 2020 (in billions). Retreived on 28 February 2017 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/.

      [17] Putnam, R. D. (1993). The Prosperous Community. The American Prospect, 4(13), 35-42.

      [18] Ritzen, J. M. M., Easterly, W., & Woolcock, M. J. (2000). On "Good" Politicians and "Bad" Policies: Social Cohesion, Institutions, and Growth (Vol. 2448). World Bank Publications.

      [19] Parkinson, M., Champion, T., Simmie, J., Turok, I., Crookston, M., Katz, B., Park, A., et al. (2006). State of the English Cities : Volume 1 (Vol. 1, p. 267). West Yorkshire: ODPM Publications. Retrieved from http://www.mccr.org.uk/downloads/DCLG_State_Of_The_English_Cities-Social_Cohesion_2006.pdf.

      [20] Turok, I., Kearns, A., Fitch, D., Flint, J., McKenzie, C., & Abbotts, J. (2006). State of the English Cities Report - Social Cohesion: Department for Communities and Local Government.

      [21] Shakeel PM, Manogaran G., “Prostate cancer classification from prostate biomedical data using ant rough set algorithm with radial trained extreme learning neural networkâ€, Health and Technology, 2018:1-9.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-018-0279-6

      [22] Markus, A., & Dharmalingam, A. (2013). Mapping Social Cohesion. Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia.

      [23] Baskar, S., & Dhulipala, V. R., “M-CRAFT-Modified Multiplier Algorithm to Reduce Overhead in Fault Tolerance Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networksâ€, Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience,2018, 15(4), 1395-1401.

      [24] Moody, J., & White, D. R. (2003). Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups. American Sociological Review, 103-127.

      [25] Bernard, P. (2000). Social Cohesion: A Dialectical Critique of a Quasi-Concept. Networks. Ottawa.

      [26] Gilligan, M. J., Pasquale, B. J., & Samii, C. (2014). Civil War and Social Cohesion: Lab in the Field Evidence from Nepal. American Journal of Political Science, 58(3), 604-619.

      [27] Schumm, W. R., & Kohler, A. L. (2006). Social Cohesion and The Five Pillars of Islam: A Comparative Perspective. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 23(2), 126.

      [28] Sridhar KP, Baskar S, Shakeel PM, Dhulipala VS., “Developing brain abnormality recognize system using multi-objective pattern producing neural networkâ€, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2018:1-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-018-1058-y

      [29] Chan, J., To, H.P. & Chan, E. (2006). Reconsidering Social Cohesion: Developing a Definition and Analytical Framework for Empirical Research. Social Indicators Research.75:273-302.

      [30] Zulkhairi, M.D., Nor Iadah, Y., Huda, I., Zahurin, M.A. and Mohd Khairudin, K. (2014b). Measuring Virtual Community Cohesion. In Proceedings of the 7th Knowledge Management International Conference (KMICe 2014), 819-824. 12-15 Aug 2014, Langkawi.

      [31] Hinkin, T. R., Tracey, J. B., & Enz, C. A. (1997). Scale Construction: Developing Reliable and Valid Measurement Instruments [Electronic version]. Retrieved [26 January 2017] from Cornell University, School of Hotel Administration site: http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/ articles/613.

      [32] Zulkhairi, M.D., Nor Iadah, Y., Huda, I., Zahurin, M.A. and Mohd Khairudin, K. (2015). Current Practices of Virtual Community and their Influence on Social Cohesion. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computing and Informatics (ICOCI 2015), 618-624. 11-13 Aug 2015, Istanbul, Turkey.

      [33] Diem, K.G. (2004). A Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Effective Questionnaires and Survey Procedures for Program Evaluation & Research, Rutgers Cooperative Extension Program Evaluation, NJAES, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Retrieved [31 January 2017] from http://cahnrs.wsu.edu/fs/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/09/A-Step-By-Step-Guide-to-Developing-Effective-Questionnaires.pdf

      [34] Shakeel PM, Baskar S, Dhulipala VS, Jaber MM., “Cloud based framework for diagnosis of diabetes mellitus using K-means clusteringâ€, Health information science and systems, 2018 Dec 1;6(1):16.https://doi.org/10.1007/s13755-018-0054-0

      [35] Lissitz, R.W. & Green, S.B. (1975). Effect of the Number of Scale Points on Reliability: A Monte-Carlo Approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 10-13.

      [36] Rummel, R.J. (1970). Applied Factor Analysis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

      [37] Hair, J.F., Black, W., Babin, B., Anderson, R. and Tatham, R. (2006). Multivariate Data Analysis. Prentice Hall, Inc.: Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA.

      [38] Rattray, J. & Jones, M. C. (2007). Essential Elements of Questionnaire Design and Development. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16, 234-243.

      [39] Manchester City Council (2016, May 25). Communities Scrutiny Committee Report. Retrieved on 28 February 2017 from http://www.manchester.gov.uk/download/meetings/id/20756/5_community_cohesion

      [40] Jeannotte, M. S. (2000). Social Cohesion around the World: An International Comparison of Definitions and Issues. Hull, Quebec, Canada: Strategic Research and Analysis (SRA), Department of Canadian Heritage.

      [41] Clary, E. G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R. D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A. A., Haugen, J., & Meine, P. (1998). Understanding and Assessing the Motivations of Volunteers: A Functional Approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1516-1530.

      [42] Schuyt, T., Smit, J., Bekkers, R. (2004). Constructing a Philanthropy Scale: Social Responsibility and Philanthropy. Paper presented at the 33d ARNOVA conference, Los Angeles, November 2004.

      [43] Schmeets, H., & Riele, S. T. (2010, 20 January). A Decline of Social Cohesion in The Netherlands? Participation and Trust, 1997-2010. Paper presented at the International Conference on Social Cohesion and Development, Paris.

      [44] Berger-Schmitt, R. (2000). Social Cohesion as an Aspect of the Quality of Societies: Concept and Measurement. ZUMA.

      [45] Bukov, A., Maas, I., & Lampert, T. (2002). Social Participation in Very Old Age Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Findings From BASE. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 57(6), 510-517.

      [46] Rheingold, H. (1993). A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community. In L. M. Harasim (Ed.), Global Networks: Computers and International Communication (pp. 57–80). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

      [47] Jenson, J. (2010). Defining and Measuring Social Cohesion. Commonwealth Secretariat and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development 2010. Commonwealth Secretariat: London, UK.

      [48] Manogaran G, Shakeel PM, Hassanein AS, Priyan MK, Gokulnath C. Machine-Learning Approach Based Gamma Distribution for Brain Abnormalities Detection and Data Sample Imbalance Analysis. IEEE Access. 2018 Nov 9.DOI 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2878276

      [49] McDonald, R.P. (1999). Test Theory: A Unified Treatment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

      [50] Muers, S. (2011). What is Community Cohesion, and Why is it Important? The Guardian: Housing Network Blog.

  • Downloads

  • How to Cite

    Yusop, N., Mat Aji, Z., & Md Dahalin, Z. (2018). Virtual Community Cohesion: a Proposed Measurement Instrument. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(3.20), 870-875. https://doi.org/10.14419/ijet.v7i3.20.28408