Summary
Contents
Subject index
The Handbook of Community Practice is the first volume in this field, encompassing community development, organizing, planning, and social change, and the first community practice text that provides in-depth treatment of globalization—including its impact on communities in the United States and in international development work. The Handbook is grounded in participatory and empowerment practice including social change, social and economic development, feminist practice, community-collaboratives, and engagement in diverse communities. It utilizes the social development perspective and employs analyses of persistent poverty, policy practice, and community research approaches as well as providing strategies for advocacy and social and legislative action.
Global Change and Indicators of Social Development
Global Change and Indicators of Social Development
Knowledge-based intervention has been a hallmark of community practice since the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the social survey movement of the 1900s was a direct outgrowth of efforts on the part of community practitioners to systematically (a) identify the nature, extent, and severity of new and emerging social needs in their communities; (b) organize people and institutions to respond more effectively to those needs; and (c) establish baseline measures against which intervention successes and failures could be assessed (Zimbalist, 1977). Even the renaming of one of the profession's leading journals of the day, from Charities and Commons to The Survey, illustrates the importance that practitioners assigned to the role of scientific inquiry for advancing practice. Mary Richmond's Social Diagnosis (1917) offered further reinforcement of the powerful relationship that practitioners recognized to exist between knowledge-based intervention and the realization of more effective outcomes. Today, of course, community practitioners all over the world seek to incorporate rigorous approaches to needs assessment, planning, and program development and evaluation in their work with communities and other social collectivities (Andrews, 1996; Balaswamy & Dabelko, 2002; Chow & Coulton, 1996; Conner, Tanjasiri, & Easterling, 1999; Drummond, 1995; Johnson, 2002; Sawicki & Flynn, 1996; Schultz et al., 2000; Telfair & Mulvihill, 2000; Wong & Hillier, 2001; Zachary, 1995).
This chapter discusses the contribution of social indicators, social reporting, and social indexes to community practice. The chapter is divided into two sections: Part Idiscusses the development of social indicators, social reporting, and social index construction from a historical perspective; Part II discusses the contribution of these innovations in community-focused social measurement from a contemporary perspective. The concepts discussed in both parts of the chapter are illustrated with examples drawn from community practice in the United States and other countries. The chapter also contains links for practitioners to some of the most important sources of local, national, and international social indicator data.
Part I: Social Indicators and Social Reporting in Historical Perspective
Social indicators, social reporting, and the development of composite measures of social progress have a long history in American social science. Indeed, the earliest efforts in all three of these fields began in the United States—initially as part of the work of the Hoover Committee on Social Trends, but subsequently, as part of the country's assessment of the impact of its space program on American life. President Johnson's Great Society program of the 1960s, with its emphasis on the attainment of five national goals, reinvigorated the social indicators effort and, in turn, forcefully linked the goals and processes of development to specific measurable outcomes.
One of the earliest contributions toward the development of a coherent conceptual framework for the emerging social indicator, social reporting, and social indexing movements was made by Raymond Bauer (1966). In his edited volume, Social Indicators, Bauer offered a comprehensive framework for integrating analyses which, until that time, largely had been undertaken independently of one another: for example, trend analyses of changes over time in the health, education, transportation, housing, labor, urban development, and other sectors of public activity. Simultaneously, Daniel Bell (1966) published Toward a Social Report, in which he laid out the conceptual framework for undertaking and reporting to policymakers and the general public analyses of critical national trends. Wilbur Cohen (1968) subsequently applied the analytical principles specified by Bauer and Bell to the work of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1969), in much the same way that Robert McNamara was applying the principles of goal-focused planning, cost-benefit analysis, and task-centered project management to the work of the U.S. Defense Department.
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