There was a wondeful series, or one-time program, on PBS a few years ago. The salient point was the importance of "connectedness" in our lives in order to achieve happiness and fullfillment. Hope it will be helpful. Try the archives at PBS.org.

I like the direct way that this one item scale attached measures social connectedness directly and visually.

Mashek, D., Stuewig, J., Furukawa, E., & Tangney, J. (2006). Psychological and behavioral implications of connectedness to communities with opposing values and beliefs. Journal of social and clinical psychology, 25(4), 404.

p410

"Community connectedness was measured using the Inclusion of Community in Self (ICS) scale (Mashek, Cannaday, & Tangney, in press). The ICS is a single-item pictorial measure consisting of six pairs of overlapping circles, with each pair of same-sized circles overlapping slightly more than the preceding pair (see Figure 1). Participants are told that each circle on the left of the pair represents themselves, while the circle on the right represents the target (i.e., community at large, criminal community). Connectedness to the community at large

p411

was assessed by asking participants to "circle the picture that best describes your relationship with the community at large."

The version on page 5 here may be better because it uses a bigger circle for the community

http://www.psych.nyu.edu/uleman/Uleman2000.pdf

Here is a review by a grad student from page 63 onwards here of many social connectedness scales which I came accross while seaching for the above.

https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/2067/Phillips-Salimi%20Dissertation%20FINAL.pdf?sequence=1

And...Should you wish to collect data in Japan please contact me via nihonbunka.com

Best,

Tim

For a multidimensional measure of social connectedness, there are not many choices. This one has yielded good data in some of my past survey research: Lee, R. M., & Robbins, S. B. (1995). Measuring belongingness: The Social Connectedness and the Social Assurance scales. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 42(2), 232.

You might also consider unidimensional measures from "big" psychological theories, including the 'positive relations with other subscale from this paper (Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of personality and social psychology, 57(6), 1069.) and the "relatedness' subscale of a measure designed to assess Deci & Ryan's basic psychological needs, found in this paper (Gagne´ , M. (2003). The role of autonomy support and autonomy orientation in

prosocial behavior engagement. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 199–223.)

Cheers!

You might find the "Mattering to Others" scale useful - -see Taylor & Turner, 2001, Journal of Health & Social Behavior. I recently used it with cancer survivors and it had good reliability. Sample items: you are important to others, others would miss you, others are interested in what you say, etc. Good luck!

social capital literature might help

The IOS scale (also known as egg scale) provided by Timothy above is a standard measure of connectedness in social psychological research. The article on the original development of the scale can be found here:

Schubert, T. W., & Otten, S. (2002). Overlap of self, ingroup, and outgroup: Pictorial measures of self-categorization. Self and identity, 1(4), 353-376.

Personally, I also made very good experiences with items measuring need satisfaction in groups; these are adapted from work by Marilynn Brewer on Optimal Distinctiveness. Here are the items I used (in natural as well as experimental groups) to measure in how far membership in the group fulfills affiliation needs:

Connectedness, Acceptance, Comfort, Belonging, Affiliation

These items form a reliable scale in my research, and are furthermore suited to distinguish between different types of groups that fulfill affiliation needs more or less. Thus, members of task groups report lower satisfaction of affiliation needs compared to members of intimacy groups.

Success!

Keyes' Social Well-Being Scale (1998) has a 3-item subscale named social integration. I think it would be relevant for your study. Keyes regards social integration as the individual's general appraisal of the quality of one’s relationships, within his/her community and society.

Anderson-Butcher et al. (2008) has a Perceived Social Competence Scale, maybe you would like to have a look.

Anderson-Butcher, D., Iachini, A. L., & Amorose, A. J. (2008). Initial Reliability and Validity of the Perceived Social Competence Scale. Research on Social Work Practice, 18(1), 47-54.

Keyes, C. L. M. (1998). Social well-being. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(2), 121-140.

Dear Douglas,

http://www.midss.org/content/contentment-life-assessment-scale-clas

CLAS is a very useful tool to assess contentment.

Best regards,

Alejandro

I was just wondering if anyone had a copy of the social connectedness scale revised by lee and draper and lee? its an update of the lee and robbins measure?

I would go with Lee and Robbins 1995. You can just use the 8 items for social connectedness

Does anyone know how to access the Campus Connectedness Scale (Lee, Leough & Sexton, 2002)?

Even though this is an old post, I am hoping somebody would respond to my follow-up question. Is there a validated scale that could be used in the elderly or people with cognitive impairment? Thanks

Depending on your needs, you might like to explore "Mattering to Others". We have adopted this in a study of cancer survivors. It has good psychometric properties. see: Article Psychometric properties and correlates of a brief scale meas...

Are there any situational measures of social connectedness, something that measures more the "state" part rather than the trait part