Community Assessments
Presentation for the Nutrition, Environment, & Food
Systems for Empowerment Internship Program
Sharon Lezberg
6/2015
Presenter Information
Sharon Lezberg
Community Resource
Development Educator,
Dane County-UW Extension
My involvement in NEFSE
• Mentor, along with Joe
Hankey, for the Brentwood
Gardens for Empowerment
Project
What is a community assessment?
- Identification of assets, needs, and community
characteristics
- A tool used to understand issues within a
community
 Where are we now?
 Where do we want to be in the
future?
 How do we get to the future we
desire?
Other Terms Utilized
Needs
Assessment
What is a Situational Analysis?
A systematic method for:
• Collecting
• Analyzing
• Delivering
Information
About
Community
•Past Trends
•Current
Conditions
Issues
Problems
Opportunities
Challenges
A Word About Assets and Needs
• Assets are those resources that exist within a
community and can be used to help meet
community needs.
• Community needs are “the gap between what
a situation is and what it should be”
(University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development)
Building Community Capacity
• “Community’s ability to define and solve
their own problems” (D. Easterling, The Colorado Trust)
• Ability to provide “local solutions to local
problems” (R. Atkinson & P. Willis, University of Tasmania)
Why do Community Assessment?
 To gain an understanding of the community,
including demographics, natural resource base,
infrastructure, and systems (health, economic, etc.)
 In order to serve a community, you need to
understand it
 Used to identify assets and needs
 Essential in planning: understand the past, evaluate
the present, prepare for the future
 To test assumptions and relevance of activities,
projects
What are the
underlying
issues?
- Use questions and
research to get below the
surface
- In community work, it
takes time to build trust
- Accept that individuals
within a community will
have different
interpretations of a
situation
Steps in a Community Assessment
• Define the Purpose & Scope
• Identify Collaborators
• Collect Data
– Gather existing data
– Identify data gaps
– Collect & analyze required information
• Determine Key Findings
• Set Priorities and Create an Action Plan
Define Purpose and Scope
• Identify community issue to be assessed, the
impacted community members, and the
geographic area to access
• Determine key questions that you want
answered
• Be sure that your questions are related to the
purpose of the assessment
Identify Collaborators
• Community members should be engaged in
planning and implementation
• Collaboration with other partners
(corporations, nonprofit organizations, local
community organizations) will increase access
to data and to resources
• Establishes relationships that will be
important for implementation and action
Collect Data
• Collect Data
– Gather existing data
– Identify data gaps
– Collect & analyze required information
– Present the information to community
partners
– Analyze the information, with community
partners
Data Sources
• Secondary Data: demographic data from
Census, American Community Survey, other
sources. In Wisconsin, the Applied Population
Laboratory is a great source of data.
• Secondary data may be for geographic areas
that are larger in scope than your project area,
and the data – if aggregated data – may mask
disparities across populations.
Gather your own Assessment Data
–
–
–
–
–
–
Surveys
Asset Mapping
Informal Dialogue
Key Informant Interviews
Focus Groups
SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
Threats)
– Network Analysis
– Ethnography
How do you Gather data from
people who are marginalized,
vulnerable, or hard to reach?
• Participatory techniques
– Participatory appraisal: needs matrix, community
asset mapping, social resource mapping
– Photo voice
– Community dialogues & visioning
• Personal observation
Community
Mapping
Photo
Voice
Determine Key Findings
Purposes of key findings:
- They validate anecdotal evidence of
community needs and assets.
- They highlight significant trends found in the
data collection process.
- They reveal differences across segments of the
community
- They help clarify answers to the community
assessment’s key questions.
Set Priorities and
Create an Action Plan
• Setting priorities through community process
• Action/implementation Planning:
– Key finding (issue)
– Activity or response
– Deadline
– Person responsible
– Indicators of success