Vol.:(0123456789) Child Indicators Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09906-0 1 3 Psychometric Properties of the Community Sense Scale in the Classroom in a sample of Chilean students Mariavictoria Benavente 1  · Jorge Fábrega 2  · Jaime Alfaro 1  · Jorge J. Varela 1  · Josefna Chuecas 1  · Tamara Yaikin 2  · Gisela Carrillo 1  · Josefna Chuecas 3 Accepted: 14 December 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 Abstract It is only recently that the sense of community in contexts other than the neighbor- hood has started to be studied, providing evidence on the associations between this variable in the school environment and various dimensions of integral development in childhood and adolescence. However, in the Latin American context, there are no validated scales to perform these measurements. The present study examined the structure, reliability and convergent validity of the Community Sense Scale in the Classroom (SCo-SC) proposed by Petrillo, Capone and Donizzetti. The participants of the study were 1065 students aged 10 to 12 from urban areas. The confrmatory factor analysis coincides with the authors’ proposal; however, due to the high homo- geneity indexes of the scale, a Bifactor analysis model was carried out. The results indicate that the SCo-SC is an adequate instrument to measure the Community Sense in the Classroom and that it is positively related to satisfaction with life and with school during childhood. Keywords Sense of Community · Sense of Wellbeing · Classroom · Scale 1 Introduction The sense of community has been defned by McMillan and Chavis (1986) as the feel- ing of belonging of those people who participate in a group, where the main idea is that its members care about each other, look after each other and share the feeling that the needs of its members will be met through group engagement. Therefore, it considers * Josefna Chuecas mchuecasj@udd.cl 1 Centro de Estudios en Bienestar Y Convivencia Social, CEBCS, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción, Santiago, Chile 2 Centro de Investigación en Complejidad Social, CICS Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción, Santiago, Chile 3 Facultad de Psicología, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción, Chile