Assessment Instruments for Measuring Community Engagement

What Instruments & questions can be used in different communities & contexts to assess engagement?

Twenty-eight Instruments were identified to support assessing community engagement. In this context, Instruments are standard questions or question sets to assess community engagement in a consistent way. These Instruments can be used to measure various domains and indicators in the Conceptual Model. See below for more information on the methodology.

Each Instrument Summary includes:

  • An overview of the Instrument, which audiences used it, and what it assesses
  • How the Instrument and the questions align to the Assessing Community Engagement Conceptual Model
  • Highlights from articles and reports on the development and use of the Instrument, how community was engaged in the process, and key findings
  • Information on language translations, psychometric properties, and more

Examples of how to navigate the instruments

A multistakeholder group is interested in understanding and improving the relationships among their community, policy, and academic partners. To find Assessment Instruments that could support their goals, they explore Instruments under the Strengthened Partnerships + Alliances domain in the Conceptual Model. They find several Instruments that they want to review more closely, and they plan to review the Assessment Instrument Summaries to determine which indicators are most important to assess.

A community group is interested in understanding the outcomes of their engagement with local community members. They are interested in seeing the Instruments that can help assess a range of outcomes in the Assessing Community Engagement Conceptual Model. They explore the Instruments that have the most coverage of the Conceptual Model. The decide to select one Instrument that aligns best with their community context and the range of engagement outcomes that they want to assess.

How were the Instruments identified?

A flow chart summarizing the evaluation and inclusion process.


Using a literature search and prioritization process, 28 Instruments were identified. All Instruments were developed, implemented, and/or evaluated with communities and were psychometrically tested.

To identify the 28 Instruments, project staff:

  • Reviewed over 1400 abstracts from published for articles/reports produced through February 2020
  • Read 369 full text articles/reports
  • Identified 82 articles/reports with 112 Instruments that assessed community engagement

With guidance from the Organizing Committee, the 82 articles/reports were prioritized. The prioritization process yielded 37 articles/reports and a total of 28 Instruments. These 28 Instruments are now summarized for use by various audiences to support assessing engagement. More information about the literature search and prioritization process will be available later this year.

Acknowledgments

The Organizing Committee would like to thank Fasika Gebru, Peak Sen Chua, and Dionna Attinson for their support reviewing and abstracting information during the literature search process.