STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING

Abstract

The study examines how community involvement and personal wellbeing interact with each other, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Our approach is informed by long-standing ideas from social capital theory and community psychology and treats community participation as a flexible construct that combines people’s intentions to get involved and their actual practices. We measure subjective wellbeing by asking about overall life satisfaction and emotional health. Data come from a one-time survey of 428 adults living in city centres and in the surrounding, less urban areas. We used established survey instruments to measure civic engagement, civic values, feelings of belonging to the community, and the different dimensions of wellbeing.The subsequent SEM examination yielded a satisfactory model fit (CFI = 0.957, RMSEA = 0.041). Community participation exhibited both direct and mediated pathways to wellbeing, the latter being statistically channelled through sense of community and perceived social support. Although civic practices generated stronger predictive currents of wellbeing mediated by social connectedness, civic dispositions displayed statistically attenuated and non-significant relationships unless contemporaneously operationalized into participatory conduct. The evidence we gathered adds fresh proof to what researchers have already said: solid social connections really do boost mental health. By linking these results to broader community-building efforts, we show how towns and organizations can create take-part policies designed to get everyone involved. Our study is a useful piece of the puzzle, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. We only offered paper-and-pencil surveys and looked at everyone’s answers at a single time, so we can’t say one thing causes another for sure. Future researchers should include how culture matters and mix surveys with interviews to get a fuller picture. Even with these bumps, the data point in the same direction: helping people join and stay in their community is still a smart way to make life feel better