Development and Psychometrics of "Social Sustainability Scale in Urban Neighborhood" in Zanjan City

Social sustainability is one of the most important factors in urban planning and management, and it requires a valid and reliable instrument. Therefore, the current research was conducted with the aim of development and psychometrics of "Social Sustainability Scale in Urban Neighborhood" in Zanjan city.

The current research is a qualitative-quantitative methodology. At first, a wide review of the texts related to the research subject, including library documents and scientific articles from 2012 to 2021, was conducted and by analyzing them in the form of a data extraction form, "Social Sustainability Scale in Urban Neighborhood” was developed. Then, content validity ratio and content validity index of the scale were measured by asking the opinion of 15 experts in the field of social sciences and urban planning using purposive sampling method using snowball method. Construct validity was measured by exploratory factor analysis, convergent validity, and divergent validity by distributing the developed scale among 480 residents of Zanjan city employees' neighborhood using convenience sampling method. Composite reliability and internal consistency reliability were calculated by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The data were analyzed in SPSS. 22 and Amos. 24.

In the qualitative part, "Social Sustainability Scale in Urban Neighborhood" was developed with 35 items. In the quantitative part, content validity was confirmed by qualitative method. Content validity ratio and content validity index were measured, and 11 items were removed, and 24 items remained. Construct validity using exploratory factor analysis with 80 specialists in the mentioned fields conducted and showed the results of 4 subscales. Convergent validity was 0.50 and divergent validity was 0.71. Composite reliability and internal consistency reliability by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient for 4 subscales of security, participation, spatial belonging and spatial justice were obtained as 0.74, 0.76, 0.79 and 0.90 and for the scale was 0.88 respectively.

The "Social Sustainability Scale in Urban Neighborhood” with 24 items, 4 subscales, has a high validity and reliability. It is recommended to use the above scale to evaluate social sustainability in urban neighborhood.