Measuring community empowerment: a fresh look at organizational domains

In 1986, the Ottawa Charter identified community empowerment as being a cen tral theme of health promotion discourse. Community empowerment became a to pical issue in the health promotion literature soon afterwards, though its roots also come from earlier literature in community psychology, community organizing and liberation education. Subsequent international conferences t o address health promotion in Sundsvall, Adelaide and Jakarta have acted to reinforce this concept. It is as relevant today as it was more than a deca de ago. The literature surrounding health promotion has since moved onto ot her overlapping theoretical perspectives, such as community capacity and so cial capital And yet the critical issue of making community empowerment ope rational in a programme context remains thorny and elusive. Community empow erment is still difficult to measure and implement as a part of health prom otion. This article offers a fresh look at key theoretical and practical qu estions in regard to the measurement of community empowerment. The theoreti cal questions help to unpack community empowerment in an attempt to clarify how the application of this concept can be best approached. The practical questions address the basic design characteristics for methodologies to mea sure community empowerment within the context of international health promo tion programming The purpose of this article is to allow researchers and pr actitioners to address again the important issue of making community empowe rment operational.