Creating a Community Capacity Assessment to Identify Agency Outcomes Related to Occupational Therapy Student Community Partnerships

ABSTRACT

Service-learning experiences immerse students in authentic situations and build partnerships with community agencies to support the health of those we serve in practice. Most occupational therapy curriculum evaluations do not systematically capture community agency benefits. Through the use of qualitative interviews and Q Methodology, the Community Agency Capacity Questionnaire (CACQ) was developed to capture the agency experience in these partnerships. This paper describes the iterative analytic process that resulted in the CACQ with 29 statements covering 6 domains: programming, evaluation, partnership, staff, funding, and marketing. The CACQ offers a means to identify outcomes from the service-learning partners' perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Service-learning project
• community
• capacity building

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

About the Authors

Anne Kramlinger, OTD, OTR/L, Doctoral Student, Program in Occupational Therapy, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA; Peggy Strecker Neufeld, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, Qualitative Research Consultant, St. Louis, MO, USA; Christine Berg, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy and Neurology, Program in Occupational Therapy, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA.