Engagement

Engagement is about evaluation.

I read a lot of blogs.

One blog said: “Development programs have to prove that they have had a strong and positive impact.”

Sounds like engagement to me.

(And you can’t have engagement without outreach.)

And outreach and engagement often takes place beyond the walls of the academy. In community.

What is community?

So I went looking.

Not a definition in Scriven’s book.

Did find a book called Methods for Community-based Participatory Research for Health edited by Barbara Isreal, Eugenia Eng, Amy J. Schulz, and Edith A. Parker.

The book can be a resource for students, practitioners, researchers, and community members who use CBPR. Probably is.

You would think that CBPR would have a definition of community.

 

Community.

The community is a unit of identity, or so says the book. And units of identity are “…entities in which people have membership…” Could be a “…family, social network , or geographical neighborhood…”. Since identity is socially created, it applies to community. “Community…is defined by a sense of identification with and emotional connection to others through common symbol systems, values, and norms…may be geographically bounded…or geographically dispersed…”

I decided to look further. Found a web site on community engagement

This site said what I found to be true. “‘Engagement’ is used as a generic, inclusive term to describe the broad range of interactions between people.” “‘Community’ is also a very broad term used to define groups of people”. These groups of people could be “…stakeholders, interest groups, (or) citizen groups…A community may be a geographic location (community of place), a community of similar interest (community of practice), or a community of affiliation or identity (such as industry or sporting club).”

So then the question is, “What is impact?”

Impact

I go back to my sources. Scriven says that there is an “impact evaluation” (“…an evaluation focused on outcomes or payoff rather than process, delivery or implementation evaluation.”) A start. Will go look at “…outcomes or payoff…”

Scriven also talks about outcome (“…immediate outcomes, end of treatment outcomes, and long-term outcomes to be discovered in follow-ups.”) as well as outcome (evaluation).  He also talks about payoff (evaluation). Parentheses, mine.

Both (outcome evaluation and payoff evaluation) focus on results, not process.

To me, it sounds like impacts is another word for outcomes.  Perhaps a long-term outcome (to be discovered in follow-up)?

(Although the health and medical fields use impact to mean short-term outcomes [Green & Lewis, 1986]. The term outcome is generally used to mean changes in health status.)

The terminology is confusing (at least) and obfuscating (at most). What does that say about outreach? About engagement?

So be upfront about what you mean when you say it. Make it clear at the outset of an evaluation. At the very beginning!