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“Personal” and “shared” aspects of sense of community identity are explored in a an established community in Durham City, England. Durham City has a history of over 1,000 years of continuous settlement, and is generally viewed as a stable and relatively harmonious setting. In the study 102 residents responded to a Community Response Questionnaire based on Puddifoot's taxonomy of elements of sense of community. The findings suggest the existence of three underlying “personal” dimensions of Sense of Community Identity (SOCI), namely, “Sense of Personal Support,” “Sense of Personal Contentedness,” and “Personal Involvement,” and three “shared” dimensions of SOCI, namely, “Perceived Community Engagement,” “Perceived Neighborliness,” and “Perceived Settledness.” This article discusses these findings and the prospect of creating a measure for comparative analysis around these dimensions. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reaction of residents of a small district in the Northeast of England to the perceived compromising of existing community boundaries was examined in the light of Tajfel and Turner's (1986) social identity theory. Social identity theory was found to provide a useful framework for explaining specific psychological reactions of residents and spokespersons to the perception of ingroup status inferiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although community identity is an area of research interest with important ramifications for all those concerned with issues of community. This paper argues that, with the possible exception of the psychological sense of community (PSOC). There is relatively link coordinated research emerging under the influence of a strong body of psychological theory. An approach emphasizing the common ground between this and related psychological approaches is put forward, such that both the common and unique qualities of the identities of communities might be made subject to rigorous and meaningful analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The important research area of community identity has failed to develop a practical means of measurement and comparative analysis. Scrutiny of the research literature suggests that this is in part due to the conceptual difficulties related to community in general, a restrictive emphasis on individual level psychological variables, and a reluctance or inability to proceed beyond exploratory methods of research to fuller field studies. Through a review of the related research in community identity in the UK, and from wider research in the areas of Psychological Sense of Community, Social Cohesion, and Community Satisfaction, a number of underlying dimensions of community identity are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]