Developing an Evaluation Tool to Examine Motivational Factors of Non-student Community Partnership Participants

Research of engineering community engagement has primarily focused on the experiences and outcomes of students, yet it is often the faculty, administrators, and community partners who have a long-term commitment to the program’s success. In this study, we are developing and validating an assessment instrument that combines two previously identified aspects of community engagement programs: participant motivation and the nature of engagement relationships. Participant motivation refers to the reasons people stay engaged in the community engagement experience and can be categorized into: student learning and growth, personal and professional development, and benefits to the community organization. The nature of an engagement relationship is defined as the quality of interactions and interpersonal dynamics within partnerships. It is associated with transactional, cooperative, and communal interactions. A validation survey was developed by creating 45 statements associated with the interacting effects of motivational categories and the nature of engagement relationships. Statements were validated by service-learning practitioners with a minimum of two years research and/or practical experience. Validation participants were provided with a codebook for motivational categories and relationship natures. They were asked to code each of the 45 initial statements with the provided categories and natures. We received feedback from eight researchers, with the initial goal of attaining 10 responses. We identified ten statements that maintain at least 75% coding convergence across responses. Our results highlight key underlying assumptions associated with the TCC Framework and opportunities to improve the instrument to increase clarity and reduce potential bias. Introduction and Literature Review Over the last two decades, there has been an increase in the number and extent of engineering service-learning and community engagement programs. Associated research has primarily focused on student learning outcomes [1]. During this time frame, the wider service-learning field has researched partnerships using methods that include analysis of community voice. Building from existing service-learning literature, the authors seek to better understand community-university partnerships in engineering community engagement programs from the perspectives of both the academic program and the served community. This study is developing and validating an instrument examining the motivational factors for non-student participants. The quality of program relationships and the factors of participant motivations give important insight in understanding and designing programs that are able to meet the needs of the communities and the universities. Bringle and Hatcher [2] developed the StudentOrganization – Faculty – Administrators – Residence (SOFAR) model to highlight five constituent groups and their corresponding relationships. From a motivational standpoint, there are different factors of interest from varied constituent groups. For example, the factors that influence a community organization may be different from those that influence faculty