Community Assessment

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A community assessment is a valuable strategy for obtaining a clear picture of your community. It will help you identify local assets as well as problem areas. It can also serve as the starting point for developing a shared vision and strategies for change within the community.

A comprehensive community assessment will help you identify:

  • How to build your organization to address specific problems.
  • Community assets that encourage competence, confidence, connection, character, and compassion for and among young people.
  • Risks that youth and families face and the resources and strengths your community has to address them.
  • Organizations or coalitions in your community that include schools, faith institutions, policy makers, employers, government agencies, community members, families, and other key players.

To conduct a quality community assessment:

  • Recruit committed stakeholders to identify issues, conduct research, and report results. (See Building Partnerships for strategies on how to bring together the right people.)
  • Involve youth in planning, implementation, and results roll-out. They have first-hand knowledge about what's going on among their peers, and about who and which entities should be engaged in the assessment.
  • Integrate your community's cultural beliefs and practices into the assessment.
  • Look at strengths and resources, including positive youth development programs and activities, in addition to risk and protective factors.

Community assessments are not conducted overnight. Leave yourself time to recruit your partners, complete preliminary research, set up your design, conduct the assessment, evaluate the results, craft responses, and report your findings.

Six Steps to Conducting a Community Assessment

Here are six easy-to-follow steps for conducting a community assessment:

Step 1: Establish the What, Where, and Who

Establish specific goals by spending time talking about the "what, where, and who" of your assessment.

What are your program's priorities?

  • Common community issues.
  • Community programming, organizations, and other initiatives that encourage positive youth development. Be sure to include programs that are youth-led, jointly led by adults and youth, and adult-led for youth. They can be related to work, community service, faith-based organizations, sports and recreation, etc.
  • Risk factors in your community. (Be aware that many may be interrelated such as violence and substance abuse.) These may include:
    • Adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse
    • Underage drinking
    • Child abuse and neglect
    • Gang activity
    • Juvenile arrest/adjudication
    • Youth violence
    • Truancy
    • Placement of children and youth in foster care
    • Juvenile weapons/gun violation arrests
    • Lower than average high-school graduation rates
    • Unemployment

Where will you concentrate your efforts?

  • City or town block
  • Neighborhood
  • City or town
  • County

Who is your target population?

  • Youth ages 10-19
  • Low-income families
  • Single-parent families
  • Families with children
  • Families with different education levels
  • Families with varying employment statuses

Step 2: Learn More About the What, Where, and Who

No single data source can provide a complete picture. Each report or piece of information you collect and review can provide a different perspective. By drawing from multiple sources you can improve the accuracy of your assessment.

Here are some ideas to help you collect quality data:

  • Create a working group to coordinate and oversee the assessment. Involve people who have experience in data collection—someone from a college or university in your community or from a local service agency is a great choice.
  • Review relevant survey results, focus group reports, community forum minutes, or other information already collected.
  • If starting from scratch, begin with data from public records available through your local health department, school district, chamber of commerce, and police department.
  • FindYouthInfo.gov's Program Directory can help you identify risk and protective factors.
  • Try surveys, focus groups, and interviews to collect new data.

Step 3: Identify Resources in Your Community

Understanding your community's resources is vital to the planning, implementation, and assessment of your program. These resources can help:

  • Use Map My Community to identify and map the federally-supported programs in your community.
  • Build a community resource inventory to identify and track the following:
    • Youth services and programs (e.g., voluntary organizations/programs, recreational/sports programs, community service initiatives, school clubs, faith-based services). Be sure to note how they are led (i.e. youth-led, jointly adult-/youth-led, adult-led)
    • Financial resources that target youth programming (federal and state grants, foundation or for-profit support, nonprofit funds, donations, etc.).
    • Material and in-kind resources (e.g., technological resources, equipment, office space, and supplies).
    • Human capital (i.e., staff, volunteers, champions).
    • Training and technical assistance services and how to access them.

Remember to involve young people themselves in this process. They have the inside track about which groups and individuals are the most supportive of their needs and concerns. In some communities young people have undertaken a process called Youth Mapping, where they develop their own resource maps.

Step 4: Analyze and Learn From Your Data

Partner with institutions that can help analyze information: school districts, hospitals, colleges, universities, or city planning agencies.

The data should address the following questions:

  • What youth related challenges and community attributes have been identified?
  • What are your community's strengths in addressing these issues?
  • What are specific, youth-related programs, organizations, and initiatives that already exist in your community and address these concerns? How are they led—by youth, adults and youth, or adults?
  • Which risk factors contribute to the community's problems?
  • Which protective factors can help solve them?
  • Which geographic areas and demographics are most affected by these issues?
  • How does your data compare with your initial understanding of the issues?
  • What additional data do you need to better understand the scope of these issues?

Step 5: Develop an Action Plan

By this point you should have a good idea of the issues you want to address and the target populations you hope to serve. You should also be able to spell out the strategies you will use to tackle issues, and clearly state the risk factors you hope to mitigate and/or the protective factors you are trying to implement. Other pieces of your action plan should answer the following questions:

  • How do you hope to promulgate the message of positive youth development?
  • Which organizations and programs in the community are addressing the issues, and how does your program fit in with/add to the work already being done?
  • Who are the partners who can help in implementing chosen strategies?
  • What do you need to implement your activities (e.g., funding, training, and/or technical assistance) and who will provide that support?
  • What are the specific outcomes you intend to achieve?
  • What measures will you use to determine the success of your action plan?

Step 6: Share What You've Learned

Planning, implementing, and sustaining a new community initiative requires the participation and support of the whole community. Give back by sharing what you learned.

Create an outline for a community assessment report with findings and recommendations. Share it with the local media by issuing press releases and providing background materials, holding community forums, and setting up meetings with elected officials and community leaders.

Questions to answer before starting a community assessment report:

  • Who will coordinate the writing process?
  • Who is best suited to do the writing and editing, and who in your organization should provide the final approval?
  • What information should be included?
  • Who is the audience you're hoping to reach through outreach and dissemination?
  • Who from the community needs to be involved in information dissemination (parents, elected officials community leaders)?
  • On the promotion side, how do you want to disseminate the report?
    • Should you hold public forums? If so, who will be the spokesperson(s) and what information should be presented? Who should be invited? How should you publicize the forums?
    • Who will be the press coordinator? Who will write the press releases and background materials, and will this person be responsible for follow-up press calls?

Your community assessment report should:

  • introduce why you performed the assessment, explain what the goals of the assessment were, and summarize the findings;
  • present key findings from your assessment and the central issues and problems that emerged.
  • describe identified risk factors and discuss the community perceptions that will need to be considered in addressing these challenges;
  • describe strengths and resources that are available in your community to address these issues. (make sure to integrate the presence of positive youth development programs and activities);
  • lay out an action plan including the strategies you will implement;
  • include measures of success that propose the ways you will determine whether your action plan is successful;
  • clarify the challenges to be addressed in order for this effort to be a success; and
  • Present your conclusions and invite your audience to get involved.

Share it with the local media by issuing press releases and providing background materials, holding community forums, and setting up meetings with elected officials and community leaders.