An Instrument Development Process for Assessing Community Coalition Uptake of Innovation

Objective: A federally-funded, university-based prevention research center collaborated with a community-based coalition to design a framework to enable capacity building for fostering local health-related policy development. To assess this collaboration, these partners co-created an instrument to measure its various dimensions. Methods: The "Community Group Member Survey (CGMS)," developed by the University of Wisconsin-Extension, was adapted by inserting a retrospective pretesting component and making modest modifications to the language to fit a policy-advocacy schema. Dimensions of the adapted instrument included: (1) process; (2) impact on individual skills, knowledge, and abilities relevant to policy development; (3) community impact; and (4) overall coalition satisfaction. Instrument administration and completion by coalition members (N = 16) occurred electronically. Results: Internal consistency of the 4 subscales ranged from .78 to .96. Item analysis informed expert review of findings, resulting in instrument modification and improved psychometrics. Furthermore, the revised instrument met standards of readability for use by a general audience. Conclusion: A simple and potentially robust tool for measuring indicators of coalition performance emerged that may be adapted for other similar type partnerships and serve as a template for further refinement.