Evaluating the National Outcomes: Community--Policy Development; Introduction

Citizen development involves programming efforts to build individuals' capacity to impact their community and to mobilize individual citizens to participate in community building and development. There are four main factors that are key to citizens becoming mobilized and able to take an active role in their community: citizen capacity building/ human capital, community assets, empowerment, and citizen participation. In order to assess programs that seek to influence citizen development, evaluation efforts can focus on any of these areas:

1.	Human capital: Did citizens' cognitive skills, knowledge, training, and/ or other personal skills improve as a result of the program?
2.	Community assets: did the social, physical, or economic context of the community become more conducive to program success as a result of the program? (as evidenced by policies, interagency networks, built environment, etc.)? a. Social community assets: did the community become more supportive of program goals as evidenced by networks, collaborations, and coalitions? b. Physical community assets: did the physical context of the community become more supportive of program goals as evidenced by the physical environment (green space, lack of litter, reduced vandalism, etc.)? c. Economic community assets: did the community's financial resources become more accessible and adequate to meet the community's needs?
3.	Empowerment: did citizens' self-efficacy, motivation, and perceived community support increase as a result of the program? a. Self-efficacy: did citizens' perceptions of competence (often derived from human capital) increase so they feel more capable of making a difference? b. Motivation: did citizens' perceptions of problems and solutions change as a result of the program, such that they have a greater desire to become involved? Did citizens become more motivated to get involved as a result of the program? Do citizens now feel driven to do something about the problem, need, issue, etc.? c. Perceived community support: did citizens' perceptions of community support increase as a result of the program?
4.	Citizen participation: did more citizens become mobilized and participate as a result of the program?

Each of these components is highly interrelated, such that programming efforts that influence one have an effect on many of them. (See Figure 3). The following literature review explains the development of these components and how programs can best seek to mobilize and develop the capacity of citizens to work toward community change.