Evaluating Community Engagement Supporting LGBTQ+ Health in Schools: Adaptation and Use of the Collaborating with Community Subscale from the Measure of School, Family, and Community Partnerships

Background LGBTQ + youth are at elevated risk for numerous negative health and behavioral health outcomes, which largely stem from minority stress and maladaptive coping. Schools are an important environment where these youth may be exposed to both stressors, like experiences of stigma, bias, discrimination, and violence, and health promotive factors that moderate the impact of minority stress. Collaboration between schools and the broader community plays a crucial role in initiatives designed to improve school climate and culture. In the context of a cluster randomized controlled trial implementing a suite of six LGBTQ + supportive practices in high schools, we used the “Collaborating with Community Scale” adapted specifically to address linkages between schools and communities focused on the needs of LGBTQ + students (CCS-LGTBQ+). Methods We conducted annual surveys over five years with an administrator and an implementation leader in each of the 42 high schools randomly assigned to either an implementation condition or a delayed implementation condition. The survey included questions on organizational leadership, implementation climate, and the CCS-LGBTQ+. We analyzed inter-rater reliability between respondent types, internal consistency, and change over time in scale items and means. Results Scale scores between administrators and implementation leaders were strongly correlated. However, administrators rated items higher than implementation leaders, as was expected given their relative positions within school communities. The scale demonstrated a high level of internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from .777 to .930 and was sensitive to changes in the implementation of scale items, indicated by increases in the scale means of implementation condition schools from 1.59 in year 1 to 2.08 in year 4 (p < .035). Conclusions Testing of the CCS-LGBTQ + resulted in a scale with high internal consistency to measure the extent to which schools collaborate with community resources to support and enhance school environments for LGBTQ + students. When used in the context of the parent trial, findings from the CCS-LGBTQ + show that schools’ collaboration with their communities increased over time. However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic likely reversed some of the gains made within the first years of implementation. The CCS-LGBTQ + is a reliable and useful tool for assessing school-community collaboration for supporting LGBTQ + populations.