# A community‐partnered process for construct & measure development: The 3Rs: Reading, Racial equity, & Relationships

## TL;DR

This paper outlines a 3-year community-driven project to develop a mindset framework and assessment tool for improving early reading and equity in education.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is a co-created 3Rs mindset definition and validated 36-item scale developed through community-partnered research.

## Key findings

- A 3Rs mindset was co-defined through thematic analysis of community stakeholder inputs.
- A 36-item scale assessing the 3Rs mindset showed strong content and associative validity.
- Community-partnered measure development produced culturally specific tools with potential for social change.

## Abstract

This paper describes a 3‐year community–partnered research initiative focused on advancing early reading, racial equity, and relationships—collectively known as the 3Rs Initiative. The project brought together researchers and community members committed to ensuring that all adults in the county embody a shared “3Rs mindset” to better support literacy development for children in kindergarten through third grade. In Study 1, researchers and community members (The 3Rs team) used thematic analysis of interviews, meeting notes, and group activity and discussion artifacts with community stakeholders to construct and validate a definition of a 3Rs mindset. In Study 2, the 3Rs team created a 36‐item scale that could assess an adult's 3Rs mindset. The scale demonstrated excellent content validity, response process, and associative validity. Findings from both studies suggest that community‐partnered measure development can be achieved through collaboration, honoring of multiple perspectives, and elevating community partners as “experiential experts” (El Mallah, 2024, p. 984). Measures resulting from such processes have the benefit of community‐defined cultural specificity and strong content validity and can be leveraged towards social change.

Researchers and community members co‐defined an adult mindset for a new 3Rs initiative.A 36‐item scale was created to assess a 3Rs adult mindset and it had strong validity.This process reflected collaboration, honoring multiple perspectives, and positive social change.

Researchers and community members co‐defined an adult mindset for a new 3Rs initiative.

A 36‐item scale was created to assess a 3Rs adult mindset and it had strong validity.

This process reflected collaboration, honoring multiple perspectives, and positive social change.