View article

Feeling like one belongs and is accepted in meaningful social groups has been reliably linked to wellbeing and health-related outcomes in numerous studies. Given the importance of belongingness as a form of social capital, we developed and evaluated a broad-scale Multilevel Random Coefficient Model predicting residents' sense of community (belongingness in the community) in a large nationally representative telephone sample of New Zealanders (N= 6631). Our model integrated both neighbourhood-level characteristics (eg, regional deprivation and the proportion of smokers) and person-level characteristics (eg, income, perceptions of local community problems, age and engagement in sports) within a single unified framework. We organized these variables into two conceptual categories that are either (a) costly (or entirely unfeasible) to change or (b) feasible to change. By contrasting these various …