Communication for Social Change Working Paper Series

Communication for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes

Section Three: Social Change Outcome Indicators

Sense Of Ownership

Sense of ownership is defined as the community's feeling/belief that the problem/issue and/or programme belong to them and they have a commitment to the programme. How intensively and extensively the people are involved in defining the issue or programme, the planning process and the implementation, will affect the sense of ownership.

"Ownership develops when partners play a key role in formulating and implementing a project and understand the benefits of participation. The recognition by each partner that he will be better able to achieve his own goals by collaborating and helping his partners reach their respective goals is the best way to ensure partners are committed for the long haul." (Kraemer (1993), p. 23).

Even though an external agent may help determine the needs/programme goals, and guide the implementation process, the community should be heavily involved so that a sense of ownership can develop. The gain of creating a sense of ownership is that it reinforces what people learn and encourages them to integrate the shared learning into related situations. This in turn, feeds back into strengthening other social-change outcomes such as "sense of collective efficacy."

Dimensions of Sense of Ownership

For the purposes of this study, six dimensions of measurement for this outcome can be identified:

• Importance of the issue or programme to participants,
• Sense of responsibility for the programme,
• Contribution to the programme,
• Benefit from the programme,
• Participants' sense of ownership of either credit or blame in the programme outcome, and
• Personal identification with the programme.

Importance of the issue or programme:

1. Level of importance of the issue or programme for members of the community.

Q: What would you say are the (10) main problems affecting your community (affecting you and your family well-being)? Rank them in order of importance, or use the list of main problems identified by the community and ask the respondent to rank them.

Q: How important is the issue/programme for you (for the community) compared to the others affecting you (the community)? Measurement can be done using a five-point scale or by comparing the relevance of the issue of concern in relation with the others: more, less or of equal importance.

Q: Do you think you (your community) should be doing more about the issue/programme?

Sources: K (key informant), S (survey), F (focus groups).

Note: The concepts of importance have to be contextualised by the costs of the solution and the size of the constraints to change. An unimportant problem that can be easily changed with low cost (financial or psychic) becomes important.

Responsibility for the issue or programme:

2. Percentage of community members that identify themselves (the community) as having responsibility for the problem/issue (programme).

Q: Who is responsible for solving this problem (making this project successful): outsiders, some members in the community, the affected/beneficiaries or the entire community?

Sources: K (key informant), S (survey), F (focus groups).

Contribution to the programme:

3. Degree to which community members contributed to the issue/programme.

Q: How much would you say you (the community) have (has) contributed to the programme as a whole: very much, slightly, not much, not at all?

Q: If not much or not at all, has anything/anyone prevented you (the community) from making more contributions to the programme (solution of the problem)?

Descriptive/control variable.

Perceived benefits from the programme:

4. Degree to which community members believe the community benefits from the programme (solving the problem).

Q: How much did you (the community) benefit from this project (from solving this problem): very much, slightly, not much, not at all?

5. Degree to which community members believe (all the community) should share from the benefits of the programme (solving the problem).

Q: Who in the community benefits from the programme (solving the problem)?

6. Degree to which members of main interest groups perceive a benefit(s) from participating in the solution.

Q: What are the reasons why you (the community) participated in the programme: for monetary incentive, voluntarily/feels programme is important, coercion, asked by local community leaders to participate, for the sake of curiosity?

7. Proportion of members of main interest group with "contradictory" reasons for nonparticipation in the programme (solution to the problem).

Q: What are the reasons why you (members of the community) did not participate in the programme: not aware about the issue/programme, did not know how to participate, not allowed to participate, did not see any benefits from participation?

Perceived accountability from the programme results:

8. Degree to which community members recognise their accountability in the outcome of the programme.

Q: Who do you think deserves the credit/blame for making this project successful/a failure: outsiders, some members in the community, the affected/beneficiaries, the community as a whole?

Perceived personal identification with programme:

9. Degree to which community members report they (the community) owns the programme (problem).

Q: Whose project (problem) is this: outsiders, some members in the community, the affected/beneficiaries, the community as a whole, others?

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