Becoming resilient: Community‐driven change and the civic capacity index

Abstract

One of the principal features of successful community governance is that it is collaborative and thus dependent on a community's ability to work together. However, there are no valid, comprehensive means to assess a community's capacity to respond to civic challenges in collaborative ways, and that are predictive of community resilience and well‐being. In this study, we describe the conceptual foundations of the Civic Capacity Index (CCI) and the multiple methods used to validate it. Findings from a large statewide sample show the CCI's scales to have high internal reliabilities and conform to a bifactor model, using confirmatory factor analysis. As hypothesized, CCI scores are predictive of multiple measures of community processes that in theory should be related to civic capacity; e.g., trust in governance, social control and cohesion, and community connectedness; public health indicators such as child abuse and suicide rates; and especially community resilience and well‐being, even a year after baseline. The empirical findings align with the conceptual basis of the CCI, in particular, the association between a community's civic capacity and resilience. This tight‐knit relationship has profound implications for promoting community resilience by building civic capacity.