Why we’re sharing our instrument for measuring social connectedness – eJewishPhilanthropy

Social connection is a fundamental, universal human need, encompassing the structure of our personal networks, the ways in which we rely on others for support and the quality of our relationships. Our connections to others help us build a sense of who we are and to whom we belong, and scientists have increasingly come to appreciate the ways in which social connectedness is a critical facet of our physical and emotional well-being.

In 2022, the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), housed at George Washington University, was awarded a research grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation to study Shabbat dinner and social connectedness. The study, a research-practice partnership with OneTable and supported by additional funds from the Jim Joseph Foundation and Jewish Federations of North America’s BeWell initiative, seeks to learn how Jewish engagement activities can contribute to building belonging and mitigating loneliness.

A OneTable Shabbat dinner. Courtesy/OneTable

CASJE was inspired to develop this project for several reasons: We wanted to work closely with partners to develop a more robust framework for conceptualizing and measuring the goals and outcomes of Jewish engagement activities; we wanted to test new ways of understanding Jewish practice that centered shared experiences rather than just individual perspectives; and we wanted to contribute to a larger national conversation about loneliness. We deliberately designed our study so that our findings can help other Jewish and civic organizations asking similar questions gain a clearer picture of the social worlds of their own constituents and better understand their needs.

To that end, with the quantitative phase of our data collection complete, we are happy to share the survey instrument we developed to help us understand and measure social connectedness, along with a short guide for nonprofit leaders that shares more about how the survey questions were developed and tested and how to think about adapting the survey instrument for use in other contexts.

We believe our survey instrument and similar tools can be adapted for use by Jewish engagement leaders to gain insight into connectedness, belonging and well-being in support of their program goals and constituent needs. In sharing these, we want to provide the field with a set of validated scales — some new, some adapted — to measure social connectedness, which we see as a key facet of Jewish engagement. We also want to share our own theories of what Jewish engagement is and what it is for, so they can be contested and improved. Finally, we want to contribute to a culture in which we share tools for measurement across organizations, and help non-specialists think about how to adapt existing tools for measuring their own goals.

By now many of us are familiar with the loneliness epidemic: the idea that many Americans feel isolated from others and lack meaningful and supportive relationships in their lives. (Our research team member, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, was lead scientist on the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the subject.) Over the last decade, studies have demonstrated that participation in community-based group activities can support social connectedness by building social identity and social cohesion and reducing loneliness, including for those at special risk.

Now is also clearly a time of great stress for the American Jewish community. American Jews report contending with a host of negative emotions since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and subsequent war with Hamas. Some recent studies also suggest that the war may be straining relationships and reshaping the social worlds of American Jews.

To demonstrate resilience through a period of stress we will need to lean on our relationships. This is a longstanding strategy in Jewish history. A focus on our collective connectedness is woven into the basic layers of Jewish religious, spiritual and cultural expression over millennia, and it is evident in how Jews develop new forms of community in the U.S. today. Connecting as Jews, even outside of explicitly religious spaces, has historically been a mechanism to support resilience in the face of exclusion from areas of social and public life.

All of this suggests a critical role that Jewish engagement organizations can play at this time. These organizations can provide a venue for their constituents to develop supportive and functional connections with others.

Measurement tools like our survey instrument can help organizations committed to this work better understand who needs support most right now and how well they are doing in meeting those needs. Furthermore, this instrument is designed to gain insight into how immediate and local relationships, with people we know and spend time with face-to-face, can shape our sense of belonging to a larger people and history and influence our orientations to our religious tradition — what it asks of us and what we draw from it. To be sure, relationships are not the only thing we need to guide us forward in difficult times; and yet relationships can provide a warm soil in which the seeds of values, aspirations, care, courage and commitment may germinate.

In December, CASJE will lead a session at JFNA BeWell’s Resiliency Roundtable to support others who want to use the instrument. In the meantime, we are happy to answer questions from communal leaders in Jewish, interfaith and civic groups interested in learning how the instrument might be useful to them. Our hope is that the insights shared in our survey instrument and guide can be leveraged towards richer organizational learning.

Arielle Levites is the managing director of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), housed at George Washington University.

Gage Gorsky is an interdisciplinary researcher and evaluator completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.