Hi Esther,
Welcome to the Community Tool Box (CTB) and Ask an Advisor, and on behalf of the CTB, thank you for taking on this challenge in the times in which we find ourselves; your efforts are appreciated. I want to acknowledge the compelling story you included about your life struggles, but more important, how you overcame those struggles to become a true asset to your community, very impressive and I’m sure inspirational to others.
Before we get down to business, let me explain how Ask an Advisor works. The advisor, in this case me, finds resources within the CTB in the form of chapters rich with information, toolkits with nuts and bolts how to get stuff done information with examples, and community stories from people just like you who have done what you want to do, while drawing upon her/his own community building work to help you come up with the answers you're looking for. To be clear, the advisor does not provide long-term mentoring or ongoing advice, usually one or two sessions suffice. In short, the advisor provides links to information in the CTB or from elsewhere if necessary, it is then up to you to sort through and determine the information likely to be the most relevant and helpful. If the advisor thinks her/his own experience might be helpful too then that's added into the mix. The questions the advisor can answer are limited to community work. More specifically, the advisor cannot provide advice about personal life situations, and is not able to answer questions involving counseling, mental health issues, individual school or degree programs, computer technology, legal issues, or other questions not related to doing community work, broadly defined. Make sense?
Okay, you submitted a lot of information so to be honest with you I’m not exactly sure what kind of advice you’re looking for, whether you want help in teaching people how to get involved locally at a grass-roots level without actually running for office or how to develop a research tool or measurement. We’ll take each one in turn.
Regarding the former, the first resource I think will be helpful to you is Chapter 6 - Communications to Promote Interest: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest. Although all of the sections will ultimately be useful to you, I think for right now Section 1 - Developing a Plan for Communication: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest.... In the same vein, the second resource I suggest reading through is Chapter 7 - Encouraging Involvement in Community Work: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/encouraging-involv.... Chapter 7 will help you encourage the community to become involved in community work toward sustainable change. There is some overlap between Chapters 6 and 7; however, I suggest reading through all eight sections, paying closest attention to sections 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8. This is not to say the other sections aren't important, but I want to focus your attention on what I think are the most relevant aspects of Chapter 7, the sections that will be of most use. The next two resources I suggest you consider are toolkits related to Chapters 6 and 7. As you might recall, toolkits provide the nuts and bolts, hands on, how to get things done information you need for applying what you've been reading in the chapters, I have three that I think will interest you. The first toolkit I offer is Toolkit 1 - Creating and Maintaining Coalitions and Partnerships: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/creating-and-maintaining-coalitions-and-partnerships. Make sure you look carefully at both the main section and the examples. You understand what it takes to encourage community involvement, but to foment sustainable change you need a coalition of community members to actually get the work done. This toolkit will show you how to bring people together and put them to work for the greater good. However, just bringing people together isn't enough, you need to both keep them engaged and increase the number of community members so the work is sustained on into perpetuity or until the problem is solved. So, the second toolkit I suggest you look at is Toolkit 8 - Increasing Participation and Membership: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/increasing-participation-and-membership. Again, read both the main section and examples - examples are total money! The third toolkit I suggest reading through, what I call the “capstone toolkit is our Justice Action Toolkit: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/justice-action-toolkit which provides resources to support community members working towards racial justice and gender equity, and injustice in its many forms. Just click any link of interest and it will tell you all you need to know about that particular action in terms of how to actually go about taking that kind of action. If you want to train community members to take action then this is the toolkit to use.
Regarding the latter, because I don’t know what the research tool is for, specifically what your research interests are, what questions you want to answer, and what you want to measure, all I can offer is advice more generally about research tool development whether a scale or some sort of survey. Truth be told, most doctoral programs provide coursework in research methods which would likely include either the ways in which one would choose a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the constructs of interest or developing your own scale/survey (or other tools if your research will use qualitative methods). If you’re back in your doctoral program then I would suggest working with the chairman of your committee or research advisor as they can offer the best guidance. Here in the CTB we have a number of chapters on evaluation, which is the closest we get to actual research. The first chapter that might be of interest is Chapter 37 – Operations in Evaluating Community Interventions: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-inte.... I think if you read through sections 1 – 5 you’ll gain some insights into the evaluation process, but I’m not sure that will help you in instrument development. Chapter 37, Section 3 covers the creation of an observational system (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-inte...), which is fairly close to what you’re looking for, more so than anything else we have in the CTB. The second chapter you might want to read through is Chapter 38 – Some Methods for Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-init.... This chapter won’t necessarily show you how to develop a research tool, but it will provide information on how to monitor progress, conduct surveys, gather community-level indicators, and other methods for evaluating comprehensive community initiatives, all of which are important in the evaluation of community work.
With that Esther, I think you've got plenty of resources to start you on your way. If, for any reason you don't find what you're looking for in these myriad resources do drop by the CTB again and I'll work with you until you have exactly what you need to the best of my abilities and with the resources the CTB offers. To reiterate, I think Chapters 6, 7, 27, 37, and 38, along with Toolkits 1, 8, and the Justice Action Toolkit will take you where you want to go, if not all the way then at least a good deal of the way. On behalf of the CTB thank you so much for coming to us for advice and more important, for the work you want to do in your community; the very best of success to you in all of your endeavors.
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