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Abstract
Current Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) research struggles to identify which aspects of its partnerships contribute to health and health policy outcomes. Challenges tend to be the dearth of research confirming the validity and reliability of instruments used for quantitative analysis, and, further, due to the prevalence of the use of qualitative research methods. The current study measures the proposed CBPR model factors of shared partner synergy, partnership capacity, and community capacity/empowerment among state agency partners and community leaders of the multi-sector, CBPR project Smart and Secure Children (SSC). The study utilizes mixed methods to measure the degree of shared partner synergy, partner capacity, and community capacity/empowerment among SSC partners. The study employs the use of a survey adapted from an instrument recommended by Sandoval et al. (2012), as well as focus groups of state- and community-level stakeholders to measure the proposed CBPR model factors of shared partner synergy, partner capacity, and community capacity/empowerment among local community leaders of the SSC program. Results show that partners, overall, report a higher level of achievement of shared partner synergy than partner capacity or community capacity/empowerment in SSC; findings, however, show no notable differences in the achievement of any of the three proposed model factors between state- and community-level partners. Further, findings show a very high level of internal consistency for the survey measures used to assess the three proposed CBPR model factors, contributing to the availability of reliable, quantitative measures for the future research of similar CBPR partnerships.