MEASURING COMMUNITY LEADERS PERCEIVED OWNERSHIP OF HEALTH-EDUCATION PROGRAMS - INITIAL TESTS OF RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Development of community ownership is often identified as an important intermediate objective of community health education programs. Commun ity ownership is assumed to be important to program effectiveness and long-term maintenance, but validated measures of this construct have n ot been available to test this proposition. A measure of community lea ders' perceived ownership of health educational programs was developed and tested. The Community Ownership Scale identified key functions wi thin a program and asked community leaders to rate the amount of contr ol the leaders themselves, the external sponsoring agency and the loca l program staff had in each area. The measure was tested with the volu nteer leadership of three community health education programs. Predict ions about scores were based on the conceptual framework from which th e ownership construct was derived. Results of these tests were consist ent with predictions, providing evidence for the validity of the measu re. Subscale scores showed high levels of internal consistency reliabi lity. This measure could be applied at different stages in the life of a program to monitor the success of efforts to foster community owner ship, and to test the relationships between perceived ownership and pr ogram effectiveness and maintenance.