Developing Community
Assessments
What is a Community Assessment?
Community Assessment: Involves comprehensive information
gathering, analysis and documentation to understand a community's
concerns, effectively characterize its needs and respond with
appropriate interventions. Discovering those things that matter to the
community, what issues the community feels are most important to
address, and what resources are available to bring about change
may be accomplished through interviews with community members,
and by conducting listening sessions, public forums, and other placebased research, resulting in an assessment (or profile) of the
community that helps identify and prioritize critical issues and plan
future interventions.
Community Assessment Steps Overview
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Talk with internal stakeholders
Develop a timeline and research plan
Analyze existing data
Conduct your own research
Combine research to make recommendations
Talk with Internal Stakeholders
• Meet with other Staff, Board
Members, Food Bank Staff,
etc.
• Discuss Scope & Goals of
the Community
Assessment.
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•
Populations/
Demographics Reached
Services Needed
Sample Questions:
• What is our strategy for addressing
health/nutrition needs and/or
economic instability of clients?
• What are your expectations for the
community assessment?
• What insights do you hope to gain
from the community assessment?
• What types of partnerships do you
think would most benefit our clients in
the areas of health/nutrition and/or
economic opportunity?
Develop a Timeline and Research Plan
Defining Objectives and
Strategies:
• An objective is a long-range
aim. It must be specific and
realistic. You can have multiple
goals or objectives for your
community assessment, but
each objective will require a
different set of strategies.
• A strategy is a specific
deliverable you need to
accomplish to reach your
objective. You can have multiple
strategies to meet a stated
objective. If you have multiple
objectives, you will need to
outline strategies to meet each
objective.
Identifying Available Resources:
Guiding questions for identifying
resources:
• What stakeholders do I need to
bring into the process?
• What data sources am I going
to use?
• Where am I going to obtain my
data from?
• If I am conducting my own
research through a survey or
focus groups, what resources
will I need to accomplish these
tasks?
Analyze Existing Data
• Analyzing the existing data will help you
begin to understand the local need, the
location and impact of existing programs
and service gaps. Additionally, it is helpful
to have national or state level information
to set context for your research.
• By comparing the level of need to existing
program interventions you will get a good
picture of what is going on in your local
community and be able to begin
pinpointing the gaps in service.
• Be sure to define Geographic and
Population scope as well as issue area /
need.
Sources of Data:
• Census Data
• Feeding America – Hunger in
America Report
• Feeding Texas – SNAP Shot
& Texas Hunger Atlas
• Texas Hunger Imitative
• Food Research & Action
Center (FRAC)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS)
• Center for Disease Control
Conduct Your Own Research
Identify Community Stakeholders and determine what data collection
method(s) you are going to use to obtain information from identified
stakeholders.
Method
When to Use
Things to Consider
When you need to solicit opinions,
gather feedback and identify social
norms on a topic from multiple people
with similar characteristics (clients,
service providers, teachers). Focus
groups allow you to gather descriptive
data quickly.
The logistics of organizing focus groups
and transcription can be time consuming
and expensive. Focus groups are very
helpful for descriptive data, but they do not
provide quantitative data, as the groups are
not big enough samples.
In-Depth
Interviews
Interviews allow you to obtain detailed
insider information that people might not
share in a group setting.
It takes a lot of time to conduct interviews
and they provide you with a limited amount
of opinions on a topic.
Survey
When you need to gather responses
from a large sample of people. Surveys
allow you to easily compare responses.
Surveys don’t capture spontaneous
conversation. If questions are not designed
appropriately you may not capture the right
information, making your data misleading.
Focus
Group
Conduct your Own Research Cont.
QUANTITATIVE VS. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Qualitative research
explores attitudes,
behavior and experiences
through such methods as
interviews or focus groups.
It attempts to get an indepth opinion from
participants.
Quantitative research
generates statistics using
methods such as surveys
or structured interviews.
The research needs to
collect information from a
large and representative
sample.
Translating Data into Recommendations
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Review the findings from your data analysis-what does the hard data tell us?
Where is the need? Where are the gaps?
Review the findings from the data you collected-review quantitative and qualitative
research (surveys, focus groups, interviews) to identify both themes and points of
contention. How does this inform the hard data you analyzed?
Build the context of the issue by highlighting gaps that depict the situation
realistically, using real stories to support facts can be powerful.
Talk with internal stakeholders and other decision makers at the food bank. Take
time to discuss the opportunities and limitations (internal and external) and use
these conversations to prioritize and shape your recommendations.
Get stakeholder input. This helps to make sure your recommendations have some
level of support from a broad spectrum of community members.
Other Resources
• Data Set / Research Studies List up front.
• Community Toolbox from Kansas University - The
Kansas University Community Tool Box provides
resources on conducting a community assessment.
Online resource for those working to build healthier
communities and bring about social change. It
offers thousands of pages of tips and tools for
taking action in communities.
• Policy Map / Other GIS Software