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. 2002 Jul-Aug;93(4):271-5.
doi: 10.1007/BF03405015.

[Evaluation of the viability and validity of an instrument to measure community activation]

[Article in French]
Dieudonné Jean-Baptiste  1 , Mustapha Berre, Louise Potvin
Affiliations

[Evaluation of the viability and validity of an instrument to measure community activation]

[Article in French]
Dieudonné Jean-Baptiste et al. Can J Public Health. 2002 Jul-Aug.

Abstract
in English, French

Objective: This study examines psychometric properties of a community activation assessment scale used for the evaluation of the Quebec project within the Federal Provincial Heart Health Initiative. The scale is composed of three sub scales, one for each of the intervention target risk factors.

Methods: Data were collected by telephone interviews conducted with 199 key informants from the 24 communities of the project. Reliability was studied using Cronbach's alpha coefficients and intraclass correlations. Validity was explored with factor analysis techniques.

Results: Subscales' internal consistency were very good, ranging from 0.71 to 0.83, but intraclass correlations between informants from the same communities were low. Factor analyses indicated a unidimensional structure for each scale.

Interpretation: These results show that the scale seems to provide reasonable assessments of the opinion of key informants regarding activation in their community. However, ranking communities based on the aggregated scores from local key informants may lead to classification problems.

Objectif: Cet article étudie les propriétés psychométriques d’une mesure de l’activation communautaire utilisée dans l’évaluation du volet québécois de l’Initiative fédéraleprovinciale en santé du coeur. Cette mesure comporte 3 échelles, une pour chaque cible d’intervention.

Méthode: Les données ont été collectées par enquête téléphonique auprès de 199 informateurs-clé issus des 24 communautés du projet. Le coefficient alpha de Cronbach et la corrélation intraclasse ont permis d’étudier la fiabilité des échelles, leur validité a été estimée par analyses factorielles exploratoires.

Résultats: L’instrument présente une bonne consistance interne avec des coefficients alphas de Cronbach variant de 0,71 à 0,83. Les coefficients de corrélation intraclasse sont très faibles (−0,04 à 0,11). Les analyses factorielles indiquent une structure unidimensionnelle pour chaque échelle.

Interprétation: Ces résultats indiquent que l’instrument semble bien mesurer les opinions des informateurs mais qu’une classification des communautés à partir d’un score obtenu par l’agrégation des opinions d’informateurs d’une même communauté pourrait être problématique.

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