Evaluating Community Engagement in Research: Quantitative Measure Development

Abstract

Although the importance of community engagement in research has been previously established, there are few evidence-based approaches for measuring the level of community engagement in research projects. A quantitative community engagement measure was developed, aligned with 11 engagement principles (EPs) previously established in the literature. The measure has 96 Likert response items; 3–5 quality items and 3–5 quantity items measure each EP. Cronbach’s alpha is used to examine the internal consistency of items that measure a single EP. Every EP item group had a Cronbach’s alpha > .85, which indicates strong internal consistency for all question groups across both scales (quality and quantity). This information determines the level of community engagement, which can be correlated with other research outcomes.

The Post-Intervention Persistence of Energy Conservation Behaviors: An Evaluation of the ‘Start Green’ Program

“…However, these limitations are more than balanced by the advantages of this approach, including greater participation rates, decreased drop-out rates over time, increased community trust and engagement, and increased external validity [30,[40][41][42][43]. Most importantly, CBR is known to foster durable change that is sustainable beyond the application of the intervention [19], which was the main goal of this study.…”

“…As with all Community-based research (CBR) [30,39], the involvement of the participants in the research design introduces possible limitations, such as increased selection and response biases and decreased randomization. However, these limitations are more than balanced by the advantages of this approach, including greater participation rates, decreased drop-out rates over time, increased community trust and engagement, and increased external validity [30,[40][41][42][43].…”

“…Most importantly, CBR is known to foster durable change that is sustainable beyond the application of the intervention [19], which was the main goal of this study. The increased sustainability of CBR based programs has long been observed in public health interventions where it has been argued by many researchers that community involvement in interventions and research not only has the capacity to create durable changes in individual lives but increases the quality of the data overall [19,30]. In any case, CBR is an accepted methodology, particularly in applied research where the goal involves understanding how best to advance energy conservation behaviors, for example, rather than solely to test a particular theory where context is less important.…”

“…It is an off-campus version of the "REWIRE" program, which utilizes Community Based Social Marketing [12,20], and other types of CBR techniques [30] to encourage increased energy conservation in campus student residences [37]. REWIRE is a modular intervention program developed by a team at the University of Toronto Sustainability Office and has been successfully implemented at campus student residences at the University of Toronto [37,38].…”

“…The few studies that have found evidence of durable behavior changes, even after interventions have been discontinued, have looked at interventions that were using techniques like commitment and feedback combined with goal setting [11,17,18,[21][22][23][24][25]. These techniques combined with a social element, such as peer feedback, public commitment, social marketing pressure, or community-based participation, appear to be even more promising in their ability to create persistent behaviors [21,22,24,[26][27][28][29], and are popular in public health initiatives for that reason [30]. As is suggested by many social psychology theories such as social identity pathway theory [31,32], perceived personal control [33], citizen participation [34], self-efficacy [35] and empowerment [36], the self-determined participatory element of these highlighted techniques, along with the engagement in communal action, may lead to a new self-definition that includes a sense of belonging, ownership, and responsibility to contribute to the collective group and act as a change agent.…”