Section 2: Community Definition: Communication for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes

Social Change Process Indicators

Community Definition

Social change refers to characteristics of a group of individuals that change over time, as opposed to changes in the individual members of a group. To measure social change in a group it is first necessary to define the group: (1) to determine what criteria are used by community members to define themselves as a group, and (2) to establish the boundaries that determine who is inside and who is outside of the group. A community is often defined by geographical and legal/governmental criteria. Using location as the criterion, a community is defined as a group of people who reside in the same locality. For groups in which members do not reside in the same location, community is defined as a group of individuals who share a common interest. A professional group, an Internet chat group or labor-union members meet this criterion for membership. But interest alone may not be sufficient. To qualify as an active member of an interest group it is also necessary to know which individuals communicate with one another about the issue, that is, who is a member of the communication network that addresses the issue. The network can be defined by face-to-face interpersonal communication or mediated communication by means of the telephone, the Internet, etc. Establishing the geographical boundaries of a local residential community (village, neighborhood, etc.) is not always simple and straightforward. The members who reside in a neighborhood may themselves have different ideas regarding its geographical boundaries. Needless to say, the boundary issue needs to be resolved before it is possible to measure accurately the social aspects of any type of community. The resulting definition can then be used to measure characteristics of the group.

To proceed, a community profile needs to be constructed by means of a series of focus-group discussions with knowledgeable, key informants in the community before conducting the study of its social characteristics (see, Hawe, 1994; Eng and Parker, 1994; Israel, et al., 1994; Krishna and Shrader, 1999; Krishna and Uphoff, 1999). In addition to preparing for the main study, these initial group interviews will establish a consensus definition of the "community" in which the remaining research is to be conducted. These focus-group discussions can also be used to draw a community map, which specifies the boundaries and indicates all of the community resources, such as wells, common land and meeting houses. The discussions can also be used to obtain an initial list of all of the formal and informal groups, organisations and institutions that exist in the community, along with a list of the leaders of each one. Techniques are available that allow focus-group discussions to place all of the relevant community groups and organisations on various-sized pieces of paper. Then they can be moved around on a large sheet of paper or table in a manner that indicates the closeness of each group to each of the others. Once a consensus is reached on this set of relationships, the same focus-group discussions can then draw lines between pairs of groups/organisations that frequently interact and cooperate with one another. The resulting interorganisational diagram can then be photographed and used later to calculate indices of intergroup network cohesion (see, social cohesion in Section 3 for specific measures).

This community definition and mapping procedure is important for the rest of the community study, so more than one focus-group discussion should be conducted. The number of focus-group discussions to be conducted for this purpose depends on the degree of diversity in the community. At least one focus-group discussion for men and one for women should be conducted separately. Groups representing different ethnicity or religions, residential areas or age groups may also be conducted. To reach a consensus on community boundaries, groups/organisations and leaders, a spokesperson from each of the groups can meet afterward to establish a consensus among the groups. Difficulty or inability to reach such a consensus is the first evidence of potential divisions in the community that may reduce its overall capacity for community dialogue and collective action.