Involving Community Partners in Evaluating the Outcomes of IUI's Community Engagement

Abstract

In 2022, the Indiana University Indianapolis Office of Community Engagement initiated a project to integrate community voices and perceptions in identifying and measuring engagement outcomes. Community and university partner narratives of perceived impact and the successes and challenges of IUI’s engagement strategy were analyzed to develop a tool to measure engagement outcomes and the quality of university-community collaborations. In 2023, the survey was validated using focus group-based cognitive interviews with a sample of community partners and IUI employees. This innovative method allowed community partners to actively shape the survey, ensuring it accurately captured community engagement outcomes. Participants provided feedback on survey questions, highlighting issues with terminology, categorization of collaboration areas, and the evaluation scale. Challenges included ensuring questions were relevant to diverse community partners and aligning survey items with actual collaboration outcomes. The study emphasizes the importance of inclusive evaluation strategies and acknowledges limitations in generalizing findings to other institutions.