Validating the Community Engagement Scale

Background: In 2012, the Institute of Medicine issued a challenge to “move beyond the traditional frameworks and measures by which community-based prevention efforts can be assessed and valued.”  This challenge focused on developing new ways to measure previously neglected dimensions of community health and wellbeing. Although researchers routinely measure traditional health outcomes, most have failed to assess more broadly defined dimensions of community wellbeing and the processes that promote community action.  In part, this failure is due to a critical gap in the literature related to the availability of valid and reliable instruments that assess these broader community characteristics. 

Methods: Survey data was collected from of an ethnically diverse sample of high school students (White/Caucasian = 64%, African American/Black = 23%, Other = 13%) participating in a university STEM pipeline program offered at West Virginia University, during the spring of 2013 (N = 554, boys = 71%).

Results: The distributional properties of the scale suggest a normal distribution with no exceptionally large scores for the peak or tale ends of the distribution (Skew = .16 Kurtosis = -.46). Factor analyses resulted in one main factor that explained about 51% of the variance (eigenvalues = 13.27) and two smaller factors with eigenvalues of 3.07 and 1.28. All three subscale analyses resulted in single factor solutions. Chronbach’s Alphas ranged from .93 to .96.

Conclusion: Evidence suggests the Community Engagement Scale measures and predicts individual and community levels of commitment to and participation in promoting the wellbeing and success of their community.