A Stakeholder Community Assessment Tool of combined methods to assess community capacity

Background: In recent years, participatory and systems approaches in communities have gained significant traction in public health. However, traditional evaluation and assessment approaches are often inadequate when capturing the complexity of changing systems over time or assessing the preconditions of a system. Thus, by combining and adapting existing methods, researchers in this study developed the Stakeholder Community Assessment Tool (SCATool). This tool assesses and evaluates a community's capacity, including partnerships, leadership, knowledge, and resources, as indicators of systems changes and analysis of systems before intervening. Methods: Previously, the Partnerships Analysis Tool and the Community Readiness Model were used to capture system changes, e.g., evaluating community capacity and readiness to change. In this study, these methods were modified and applied together, resulting in the SCATool. This new tool was tested in five Danish communities in a participatory systems trial, Children's COOPeration Denmark. Results: This methodological study shows how researchers can use the SCATool to analyze and assess communities' capacity building and readiness to change at baseline and its potential to capture potential community changes during the systems change process. Further, the study shows the tool’s formative purpose during system change processes, providing information and an overview of the community capacity for stakeholders to catalyze systems change. Conclusions: The SCATool delivers valuable insights into a community’s readiness for change, maps key stakeholders and their relationships, and helps prioritize decisions that support systems changes. Effective stakeholder recruitment is vital to its success, as a comprehensive understanding of the broader community system underpins its impact. Future research should examine the tool’s ability to track changes in community capacity over time and assess its potential as a useful evaluation tool.