Resumen de Community participation and sense of community inretirees from the city of Serpa
Armindo Mendes de Carvalho, Maria Cristina Campos de Sousa Faria
This study intended to investigate the role of different types of community participation in sense of communityas well as to explore the role of a set of variables described in the literature as determinants of participation. To dothis we adapted to the Portuguese population the Australian Community Participation Questionnaire and the Sense ofCommunity Index 2 and built the Community Participation Determinants Inventory, instruments which have shownto be adequate to evaluate these variables.A sample of 229 residents of the town of Serpa was involved, 107 of whom were retirees. The whole sample wereinvolved in the validation procedures of instruments, but only the retirees were taken in account in the main study.The results indicate low levels of social contact with workmates, adult learning, religious observance, organizedcommunity activities, voluntary sector activity, expressing opinions publicly, community activism and political protest.Significant relations between sociodemographic variables and community participation, including gender, maritalstatus, employment status, professional level, educational level, income, length of residence and the household werefound. Regarding the relation with the sense of community, significant correlations were found with the overall levelof participation, with the breadth of participation and with most types of participation, except for contact withimmediate household, contact with extended family, social contact with workmates and political protest.Despite of found relations with all determinants of participation, their correlations with the levels of participationare most significant in the intrapersonal factors
