A new level of analysis for climate research: development of a community involvement climate scale

The goal of this study was to adopt the concept of climate, which has been researched extensively in the context of organizational psychology, to the study of communities and develop a scale for community climate of involvement. We demonstrate that communities can constitute a valid level of analysis for the study of climate. The scale development was done in two steps: Step 1, a qualitative investigation of 39 geographical community members, found evidence of the existence of climate in communities and identified a climate facet that is relevant to the study of communities–involvement. Based on the qualitative data collected in this step, we then developed a community involvement climate scale. Step 2 tested the reliability and homogeneity of the community involvement climate in a sample of 300 participants from six communities. The results of the study attest to the existence of climate in communities and provide a valid and reliable community involvement climate scale. We discuss the contributions of this study and suggest future studies on climate in communities.