Measuring Community Mobilisation

Abstract

Community mobilisation (CM) is a transformative approach used to create social change on complex issues. CM has been used in practice for many years; however, until recently, had little presence in the academic literature. Increasing interest from academics and practitioners in CM has led to questions about definition, the domains of CM and how best to measure it. There are a number of challenges to measuring CM due to the lack of consensus on definition, the complexity of the construct, and the lack of available literature and measurement tools specific to CM. The need to develop quantitative tools to assess CM has been articulated in the literature and in the field. A new tool to measure CM in the context of family violence prevention and healthy relationship promotion is the key contribution of this thesis. Aims: The aims of the study were to define the concept of CM, to identify the domains of CM and to develop a quantitative tool to measure CM in the context of preventing family violence and promoting healthy relationships. Further, the study aims included assessment of the ability of the tool to measure CM, investigation of the relationship between measurement of CM and community readiness (CR) and investigation of the impact of social context on CM. Methods The Aotearoa Community Mobilisation Questionnaire (ACMQ) was developed using the literature and a practice example. The methods used in the development process are presented in detail. Case study methodology was used to test the utility and validity of the ACMQ, to assess CM and the relationship between measurement of CM and CR and the impact of social context on CM in two urban communities in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Results The domains of CM were identified in the literature and used to develop the ACMQ. The statistical analysis of the ACMQ showed the tool has high internal consistency. The results from the ACMQ assessment showed that Ranui had significantly higher agreement than Glen Innes on all scales. The CR assessment results showed that readiness increased in both communities between the 2014 and 2016 assessments. Glen Innes had higher readiness scores to prevent family violence and promote healthy relationships than Ranui at both assessments. Conclusion: The study began to establish the utility and validity of the ACMQ to measure CM to prevent family violence and promote healthy relationships in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. The tool can now be validated with different population groups and in different contexts. Results of the ACMQ assessment suggested that Ranui had higher CM than Glen Innes. The results of the CR assessment indicated that Glen Innes had higher CR than Ranui. These results were not expected. It was expected that the community with the highest CM scores would also have the highest CR scores. Initially, it appeared that these results conflicted; however, further analysis showed that the results can be explained by the type of participants used in each tool (community members or key informants), the ability of the tools to assess formal and informal community efforts to address an issue, and the importance and impacts of social context on CM.