Concept mapping for planning and evaluation of a community-based initiative

Community-based initiatives address community issues by providing a multi-agency approach to prevention and intervention services (Connell et al.,1995). When incorporating multiple agencies, it can be challenging to obtain multiple perspectives and gaining consensus on the priorities and direction for these initiatives. This study employed a participatory approach called concept mapping to build consensus amongst stakeholder groups in a victims' assistance program. This multiple-method technique provided visual representations of the findings assessing community initiative providers' perceptions of barriers to accessing victim's assistance services for children and families who experience or witness violence or trauma. Visualizations organized findings into interpretable groups of statements to label and provide actionable next steps for community initiative providers. Several results of interest emerged from this study. First, there are varying community and system facets that providers perceive to be barriers to children's and families' access to care; some are within the trauma provider system of care whereas other barriers are perpetuated within the community. In addition, stakeholders rated barriers based on their prevalence and capacity to change within the community. Average ratings varied by cluster, with distrust of the trauma-informed system of care as the most prevalent barrier and workforce development as the barrier noted as the easiest to change. Stakeholder group ratings for prevalence of all clusters were higher for program staff than from law enforcement officers and mental health providers whereas ratings for capacity to change were in greater agreement between stakeholder groups overall. Moreover, program staff noted that the concept mapping process and visualizations provided them with a means to discuss actionable steps with community-based initiative providers of the victim's assistance program as a whole