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Measuring Collective Efficacy in the Context of Community-Based Child Maltreatment Prevention

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Abstract

Despite growing recognition of the importance of communities to children’s safety, efforts to translate this research into child maltreatment prevention initiatives has been lacking. In this article, we argue that one of the challenges to developing and evaluating community-based child maltreatment prevention efforts is identifying effective instruments for measuring community-level change. In particular, this article addresses the role of collective efficacy in promoting children’s safety, challenges with utilizing the existing measure of collective efficacy in the context of child protection, and the development of a new measure. After articulating a theoretical framework regarding the role of collective efficacy in child protection, existing strategies for measuring collective efficacy are reviewed and the strategy employed to devise a new measure is articulated. Ultimately, the new measure consisted of 15 items, and the scale had relatively high reliability (α = .848). Further, the scale fulfilled the criteria for construct and convergent validity. Because implementation science in the context of community-based child maltreatment prevention is relatively young, there is a need to better understand the mechanisms by which children’s safety is ensured. This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between collective efficacy and children’s safety.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Haruv Institute, Jeruslem, Israel

    Osnat Lavenda

  2. 9/2a Klee st., Kiryat Ata, 28261, Israel

    Osnat Lavenda

  3. Kempe Center, University of Colorado, Denver, USA

    Jill D. McLeigh

  4. School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Carmit Katz

Authors
  1. Osnat Lavenda
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  2. Jill D. McLeigh
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  3. Carmit Katz
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Correspondence to Osnat Lavenda.

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Lavenda, O., McLeigh, J.D. & Katz, C. Measuring Collective Efficacy in the Context of Community-Based Child Maltreatment Prevention. Child Ind Res 10, 489–504 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9398-7

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