When looking for assessments concerning community and connectedness, the key term that emerged the most was “school connectedness.” In order to measure and assess school connectedness, it needs to be defined. School connectedness can be defined as a sense of belonging in a school, whether students like their school and feel supported in it. It can also be found that school connectedness comes from students having friends at school and being involved in extracurricular activities (Libbey, 2004). There are several assessments that can be used to measure school connectedness, for this paper the following will be addressed: The Hemingway: Measure of Adolescent Connectedness and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988).
The Hemingway
The first measure of connectedness to be created was The Hemingway in 1994: measure of adolescent connectedness. It was made originally to effectively measure the impact of a high school mentoring program at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas. The author of the test was Michael Karcher (Gray, 2021). An adolescent’s connectedness to their self, friends, family, and school affects their academic performance and can be a predictor of violence or substance abuse. This assessment depending on the version you use short (fifty-seven items) or long (seventy-eight items) has questions that address all types of connections. Due to the length of the survey, it might be better geared for secondary because they are more likely to stay on task. It could potentially be used with grades four and five if there was adult assistance to stay on task.
The assessment asks for students’ sex, gender, age, race, and living arrangements. All of this is to see what other potential factors could be influencing connectedness. Then depending on the long or short version the number of items differs. Also, the language in the survey is distinctly understandable for the adolescents it was created for. The survey taker is then asked to rate the truthfulness of a sentence on a six-item Likert scale with the labels: 1) Not at all true, 2) Not really true, 3)Sort of try, 4) True, 5)Very true, and 6) Unclear. This is a clear scale that gives the adolescent taking the survey several answer options. The survey has subscales that fall into the categories of self, others, and society. The areas of self-connectedness it assesses for are 1) positive feelings about the self and a consistent sense of self over time and across relationships. 2) the ability to be alone and to tolerate rejection and criticism, and 3) a sense of self-in-the-future (Karcher, 2011). It measures one’s connectedness to others by looking at connections to 4) parents, 5) friends, 6) teachers, 7) siblings, and 8) peers (Karcher, 2011). Finally, their connection to society includes 9) school, 10) neighborhood/community, 11) culturally different others, 12) reading, 13) religion (Karcher, 2011).
Adolescents’ level of “connectedness” to self, friends, family, and school contributes to their academic performance and can also predict violence and substance use. The school however is the perfect direct environment to be influencing these factors for a student through their connectedness. This survey has been used before at the secondary level, and a specific case it was used in was in a small rural school (Davis & Karcher, 2003). This study found that connectedness was found most strongly in grades six, eleven, and twelve in a small rural school. This use of the assessment found that girls reported greater belonging in school and relationships than boys. This is an important element to consider when a counselor is considering interventions for schools and targeting areas of connectedness.
My colleague Jack Manning had the following to say about the following assessment:
Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support
The third instrument analyzed was the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) that has been used in a multitude of small- and large-scale settings; including elementary and secondary K-12 schools. The MSPSS was created to identify levels of social support adequacy and to assess perceptions of social support adequacy from three specific sources: family, friends, and significant others (Zimet et al., 1988). The MSPSS assessment tool is simple, time conserving, and easy to use with high internal validity data points. Factor analysis is used in order to determine the validity of considering different sources of support as independent from one another. The MSPSS has 12 items addressing the three main areas of study with family, friends, and significant others. Each of these is broken down into four items. The areas specifically looked at are: social popularity, respect, and it directly related to perceived social support. Each of these items is rated on a seven-point Likert-type scale that ranges from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). The twelve subscales are: 1) There is a special person who is around when I am in need, 2) There is a special person with whom I can share my joys and sorrows, 3) My family really tries to help me, 4) I get the emotional help and support I need from my family, 5) I have a special person who is a real source of comfort to me, 6) My friends really try to help me, 7) I can count on my friends when things go wrong, 8) I can talk about my problems with my family, 9) I have friends with whom I can share my joys and sorrows, 10) There is a special person in my life who care about my feelings, 11) My family is willing to help me make decisions, and 12) I can talk about my problems with my friends (Zimet et al., 1988).
Elementary-aged students and secondary-aged children both had strikingly similar results in regard to levels of perceived social support and levels of depression or anxiety. Those who scored higher in all three sub-groups of perceived social support also revealed lower levels of depression and anxiety when compared with the depression and anxiety scale used by the researchers. With the adverse being true with those who scored low in levels of perceived social support. Interestingly enough, these results only apply to perceived social support. Meaning if there is not as much social support as it is perceived the results still hold true to that of what is perceived by an individual (Zimet et al., 1988). A study conducted in an urban school district also found that the student who had access to higher levels of perceived social support were more likely to graduate and have lower levels of depression or anxiety (Canty-Mitchell & Zimet, 2000). Thus, schools that do a better job at creating an environment of perceived social support that engages the family and other important community partners will see lower levels of depression and anxiety across their student populations.
Canty-Mitchell, J. & Zimet, G.D. (2000). Psychometric properties of the multidimensional scale
of perceived social support in urban adolescents. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 28, 391-400.
Davis, C. (2003, March 23). Connectedness Report: Small Rural School District, Connectedness
Profile: Sample, 1–29. http://adolescentconnectedness.com/media/HemSchoolReport
Sample.pdf
Gray, S. (2021). Hemingway: Measure of Adolescent Connectedness. Retrieved February 26,
2021, from http://adolescentconnectedness.com/
Karcher, M. J. (2011). Hemingway—Measure of Adolescent Connectedness. The Hemingway:
Measure of Adolescent Connectedness, (5).
http://adolescentconnectedness.com/media/HemingwayManual2012.pdf.
Libbey, H. P. (2004, September). The Journal of School Health, 74(7), 274-283. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1746-1561.2004.tb08284.x
Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G. & Farley, G. K. (1988). The Multidimensional Scale of
Perceived Social Support. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52, 30-41.
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