The Community Assessment Tool was developed by America’s Warrior Partnership (AWP) Community Integration to give communities the means to assess their ability in assisting those serving in the military, veterans, and their families. This tool is expected to be used throughout the community development process. It is to be used at phases of a community’s implementation of Community Integration. These phases can include the initial online assessment done by AWP, an onsite visit done by AWP, a community’s self-assessment at the beginning of their implementation process, an annual self-assessment, and finally an annual one conducted by AWP during program oversight. The use of the effectiveness scale and its weighting measures will assure consistency throughout all phases of assessment and provide for ease of comparison of progress.
This Community Assessment Tool is a Likert-based effectiveness scale with eleven measured areas that comprise the holistic approach to a community’s support of those serving in the military, veterans, and families. Likert scales are the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research. This is a subjective measure where 5 is the most effective and 1 is the least effective characteristic. The weight scale measures, defined below, incorporate the characteristics from most influential to least influential.
The eleven areas are to be evaluated and rated on their effectiveness. Based on these levels of effectiveness, they are scored against their importance (weight) as compared to the other areas. A score is obtained by multiplying the effectiveness score with the weighted score. The sum of these scores is then normalized against a 100% providing a relative score of the community’s effectiveness.
© 2014 America’s Warrior Partnership. All rights reserved. Community Assessment Metric