Measuring the Cohesion of Social Groups: Questions and Solutions |
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| Coordinator 1 | Ms Natalia Voronina (NRU HSE) |
| Coordinator 2 | Dr Maria Kozlova (NRU HSE) |
Сohesion is one of the most important indicators to describe the state of social groups and society as a whole. There are different approaches to conceptualize and to measure cohesion as on macrolevel (for example, Cohesion Radar (Dragolov G., Boehnke K., Delhey J., et al., https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/GrauePublikationen/GP_Social_Cohesion_Radar.pdf Dickes P., Valentova M. Construction, Validation and Application of the Measurement of Social Cohesion in 47 European Countries and Regions // Social Indicators Research. 2012. Vol. 113. P. 827–846.) and on group level (for example Dupuis M., Studer J., Henchoz Y.et al. Validation of French and German versions of a Perceived Neighborhood Social Cohesion Questionnaire among young Swiss males, and its relationship with substance use // Journal of Health Psychology. 2014, Friedkin N. E. Social Cohesion // Annual Review of Sociology. 2004. Vol. 30 (1). P. 409–425)
The variety of measurement techniques indicates a kind of conceptual uncertainty, different techniques use different indicators hence can lead to different results even for the same communities.
We would like to demonstrate new approach of measuring of social group cohesion and its adaptation to measurement of online community cohesion.
We invite to participation researchers who would like to show the results of measurement of different social groups and / or communities cohesion; the studies of cohesion at different levels (micro-, meso-, macrolevels), comparisons of methods for investigating social or group cohesion, results of developing new or refining known methods of measuring cohesion, and especially adapting or developing approaches to measure cohesion of online communities.