Development and pilot of a tool evaluating community-engaged group processes and community-centered impact for institutional level advisory boards

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new evaluation tool for community-academic advisory groups, using mixed methods to assess group processes and community-centered outcomes.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a participatory mixed-method evaluation approach for institutional advisory groups, co-developed with community and academic partners.

Findings

The survey identified positive assessments of group process outcomes like shared values and community-centeredness.

Storytelling sessions revealed concerns about power-sharing, decision-making, funding equity, and trust-building.

The evaluation approach proved useful for highlighting discrepancies and improving community-academic collaboration.

Abstract

While evaluation approaches for community-academic research groups are established, few tools exist for academic institutional advisory groups across multi-core centers and research, education, and clinical care missions. Institutional advisory group evaluation should consider group processes and their impact on community-centered outcomes. This study describes the community-engaged development of a mixed-method evaluation approach to address this gap and presents pilot outcomes across an NIH-funded center.

We utilized a Community of Practice model to co-develop a survey with 14 community and academic representatives of four advisory groups. The final survey included five categories of group process and four categories of outcomes. Storytelling sessions with community partners explored areas where the survey identified discrepancies in perspectives between community and academic team members, as well as areas with lower scores.

Nine community and 14 academic (staff and faculty) partners completed the survey. Respondents positively assessed group process outcomes (shared values, leadership, community-centeredness, and decision-making), and slightly less positive assessments of institutional outcomes. Storytelling sessions confirmed the overall satisfaction of community partners but highlighted actionable concerns within power-sharing, decision-making, funding equity, and trust-building.

The results of this equity-centered evaluation suggest the utility and importance of participatory, mixed-methods approaches to evaluating community-academic institutional advisory groups.

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