MEASURING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

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MEASURING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

• Economic Perspectives

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Bradford Community Engagement

Bradford Comunity Engagement research concerns
the CE dimension of work in the
University Measurement took place without a
clear prior notion of what CE is. There was a
continued ambiguity about where it sits beteween
the activities of teaching/research/kt type
work More recently CE activity has made a minor
appearance in the staff appraisal documents
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SUCK IT AND SEE OR ZEBRA METHODOLOGY

• Initially people were asked to enumerate their
  non traditional activities which were then
  catalogued in the hope of the dimensions of CE
  emerging.

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SPECIMENProject
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SEARCH FOR ECONOMISTS VALUATION

• The benchmark document was the Kelly
• Report 2005 which looked at the Scottish
• University sector to value its total
  contribution. The term Community Engagement is
  not specifically used as will be seen below.

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KELLY REPORT

• Towards the estimation of the economic value of
  the
• outputs of Scottish Higher Education Institutions
  
• An Overview of the Content of the Main Report
• Ursula Kelly Iain McNicoll Donald McLellan
• University of Strathclyde November 2005
• The main report Towards the estimation of the
  economic value of the outputs
• of Scottish higher education institutions is
  available from
• www.strath.ac.uk/projects/economicrole

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Kelly Report Focus Conclusion

Examine new and different ways of approaching the
problem of assessing the economic value of
higher education institutions. This had been
undertaken essentially as a small pilot
project, with a single higher education
institution as a case study. The aim had
been to examine whether it was possible to
identify all of the outputs of an HEI
(including the intangibles such as cultural
engagement The pilot study showed that the
development of volume and value output
measures for this particular HEI was possible
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SCOPE

• 220 separate outputs were identified. These
  outputs were allocated to one or more
• of the following groups..
• The groups included -

Cultural Outreach Community Outreach
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METHODS

• Standard economic methods are applied of
• finding a volume/output measure and multiplying
  this by a price measure.
• This gives a measure of value which enables us
  to add up disparate outputs to get a total value
  from a University.
• The CE value can be identified by isolating the
  value of the CE outputs.

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ATTRIBUTION PROBLEMS

• This is ..........
• Easier said than done
• Prone to use and misuse
• The classic use/misuse is to reallocate
  resources based on the comparative contribution
  of different sectoral elements

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Measurement Issues

• What activities should be included?
• Should measurement be in monetary terms?
• If measurement is in money terms
• How are benefits of non traded goods and services
  to be measured at all?
• Which concept of costs should be used?
• Why is the measurement being done?

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COST ISSUES
Concepts of cost measurement may differ
between Accountants Economists Lay
Thinking
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BENEFIT ISSUES
The core probem is valuation of non-market
benefits. Economists traditionally imputed these
but there was then a vogue for CVM which is now
under critical scrutiny. CVM was quite
prevalent in the literature consulted by the
non-economists in this CE evaluation
project.

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Cost benefit cliches

• The costs are easier to measure than the benefits
• In terms of
• identifying them in the first place
• accuracy of valuation if identified

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• Normative Issues
• Distribution
• User/Provider disparity

• Estimation Issues
• Confidence interval
• Biases
• Sampling

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AVOIDING SPURIOUS QUANTIFICATION

• The key risk of economic measurement is that it
  leads to spurious quantification viz.
• The presentation of estimates which contain a
  large element of subjectivity and approximation
  as if they were hard.
• Avoidance of this requires
• due recognition of the variance of estimates
• and/or a more explicit presentation of the
• core elements in a non-quantitative way

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LEXICOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

• The economic approach of summing costs and
  benefits fails to take account of
• any non quantitative hierarchy of values.
• This is the rationale for the REAP approach.

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REAP

• Reciprocity there is a flow of knowledge and
  information in both directions between the
  University personnel and the participants in the
  project
• Externalities outside the value added to the
  participants (for example by giving them a market
  good or service) there are additional benefits to
  non-participants for example if a community
  becomes more cohesive in 18 months time in
  consequence of a project
• Access participants have access to university
  facilities and resources as opposed to simply
  receiving a one-off provision of goods/services.
• Partnership extended reciprocity and access
  develop expectations of joint participation in a
  relationship.

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CONCLUSION

• Non-economists in project evaluation areas
• are at risk of being held hostage or seduced
• by the quantification offered by economists.
• This has the attraction of being a social science
  alternative to accountancy perspectives.