Combating loneliness at the neighbourhood level: Developing a Community Cohesion Index

With an increasing concern toward social isolation and loneliness issues in society, there is growing interest in social initiatives aiming to enhance social connectedness within communities. To make such efforts sustainable, the next step would be to evaluate their effectiveness to develop evidence-based practices. The goal of this project is to build a reliable assessment tool, named Community Cohesion Index (CCI), that measures the social cohesion between and among neighbors. To achieve this, this project will collect multi-source data tapping into different aspects of community cohesion (i.e., social connectedness, belonging, ownership, and safety) within different neighbourhoods in the Lower Mainland. We will then use the CCI to test the effectiveness of the “Hi Neighbour” initiative that the partner organization developed to promote connectedness in neighborhoods. Furthermore, we will develop a set of guidelines to assist the public use of CCI. We expect the CCI will provide a holistic assessment of the effectiveness of social policy and intervention aimed at better-connected neighborhoods.

Faculty Supervisor:

Frances Chen

Student:

Yeeun Lee

Partner:

United Way

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Other services (except public administration)

University:

University of British Columbia