Exploring “personal” and “shared” sense of community identity in Durham City, England.

“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]