Community-Based Research Assessment Tool

Posted by on April 24, 2011

We write to let you know about an assessment tool we’ve developed and to offer it for your use.  Our research team has developed a survey instrument to assess the student learning outcomes of community-based research (CBR).  The survey, whose reliability and validity have been tested, captures five dimensions of outcomes, including academic skills, educational experience, civic engagement, professional skills and personal growth.  Development and testing of the instrument were supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service under Learn and Serve America’s grant to Princeton University in partnership with the Bonner Foundation.

The survey is available online through summer 2012 as part of a national study.  We seek to quantify student learning outcomes and to research the influence of various practices and academic factors on what students learn from CBR experiences.  We hope to provide data and information useful to practitioners and the field.  This study has the potential to assess learning outcomes at the student, course, and institutional levels and is approved by Princeton University’s Institutional Research Board for Human Subjects.

The online survey assesses CBR student learning outcomes for cumulative CBR experiences, and we ask that you invite your students to participate.  Princeton will collect the data, perform the analyses, and report the results back to faculty members and institutions whose students participate.

If you would like more information about the survey and how it will work please see http://www.princeton.edu/cbli/student-cbr-survey/.  You are also welcome to contact any of us with questions about the instrument and how it might be useful to you.

Trisha Thorme
tthorme@princeton.edu

Gary Lichtenstein
gary@qualityevaluationdesigns.com

Nick Cutforth
ncutfort@du.edu

Martin Tombari
marty@qualityevaluationdesigns.com