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ABSTRACT. The authors revised the Group Cohesion Scale (V. Veeraraghavan, H. Kellar, T. W. Treadwell, & V. K. Kumar, 1996) by dropping 1 item, rewording one item; reducing the number of anchor points from 5 to 4 by dropping the not applicable response category; and changing the anchor points from low, moderately low, moderately high, and not applicable to the more familiar strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree response categories. They tested the revised scale, consisting of 25 items, in 8 psychodrama group classes. The Group Cohesion Scale-Revised (V. Veeraraghavan et al., 1999) showed acceptably high reliability for use in research and seemed to be sensitive to detecting changes in cohesiveness as a function of group development. Consistent with their previous investigation, the authors found that summer classes were more likely to show increases in cohesiveness than regular semester classes, probably because of the increased frequency and sustained interactions demanded by a 1-week course that met for 8 hr each day.
Key words: cohesiveness, group cohesion, group process
BECAUSE OF THE WORK OF MORENO AND JENNINGS (1937), Newcomb (1943), Thibaut (1950), Festinger and Kelly (1951), and Cartwright and Zanders (1960), the concept of group cohesion has become a key notion in many theories of group processes (see Forsyth, 1999). The concept of group cohesion, which has been around for decades and has been investigated by many researchers, has many definitions.
Langfred (1998) defined cohesiveness as how much members of a group like each other or as the amount of friendship between group members. Nevertheless, although mutual liking tends to be a strong source of cohesion, members of a group do not have to like each other to form a cohesive group. Rempel and Fisher (1997) explained group cohesion as the primary motivation to remain in a group. Frank (1997) described it in terms of a member's sense of belongingness to a group or the attractiveness of a group for its members. Frank suggested that "the greater the cohesion of a group, the more influence its standards exert on its members" (p. 63).
Forsyth (1999) regarded cohesion as analogous to the "glue" that holds a group together or as the strength of the bonds linking group members to the group. He observed that...