An evaluation of community and corporate bias in assessment tools

This is a comprehensive review and evaluation of the main international and national tools utilised to assess the impact of developments on communities to determine their validity of their capacity to detect and measure impacts across a wide spectrum of community resources. Manuals from environmental, health and social impact assessment were reviewed. The criteria for evaluation were the type of indicators used in the tool; the stage at which communities were involved in the assessment process and whether assessments were completed from an insider (local) or outsider (expert) perspective. The findings were that few guidelines include detail in measuring, monitoring, and including community-validated indicators. It is still rare to find impact assessments that include criteria that are meaningful to the community rather than to the developer or outside expert. While the need to include the target community in the assessment process has been acknowledged over the last 10 to 20 years the rigorous work required for the development of criteria to validate community-driven assessment still needs to be completed