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- Title
KWALITEITSSTANDAARDEN VOOR HET ONTWIKKELEN VAN MEETINSTRUMENTEN GERICHT OP EMPOWERMENT: EEN KRITISCHE BESCHOUWING.
- Authors
NOORDINK, THOMAS; VERHAREN, LISBETH; SCHALK, RENÉ; VAN REGENMORTEL, TINE
- Abstract
Empowerment is a central concept within social work in the Netherlands and Flanders. Both citizens, professionals and politics require measuring instruments that expose the empowering effect of social interventions. There are various measuring instruments that aim to measure different levels of empowerment. The way in which measuring instruments are developed, however, seems to affect the quality of the instrument. Important is the way in which an instrument is based on the theoretical framework; the extent to which the target group is involved in the development of an instrument; the extent to which the definition of the concept of empowerment is aligned with the perception of the target group. To this end and with this in mind, five quality standards have been developed in Flanders, and tested in the context of organization empowerment and in the context of social work, with which statements can be made about the value of the creation of a measuring tool for empowerment. These relate to the scope of the instrument, the context specificity of the instrument, the extent to which the target group is involved in the development, the extent to which the target group is involved in the use of the instrument and the extent to which the instrument distinguishes processes and outcomes of empowerment. In this article, the way in which a number of measurement tools of empowerment have been developed is critically considered and evaluated based on these quality standards, in order to gain insight into the value of these quality standards as a framework for developing instruments. The last standard, concerning processes and outcomes is not taking into account, due to the limited research design and the limited time frame of this study. The development of three validated measuring instruments that are used in social work, have been studied by combining semi-structured interviews with the developers with existing material about the instruments. The five quality standards formed the starting point for the questions to the developers, looking for similarities and deviations between the development of their instrument and the standards. The quality standards offer a quality framework and provide insight into the development possibilities of measuring instruments. One conclusion confirms the importance of a good definition of what is measured so that a complete picture of empowerment can be acquired. It became apparent that a tension arises when developers deviate from the theoretical framework of empowerment in determining which items should be included and only the perception of the target group was a determining factor, even though the perception of the target group is crucial for the creation of a fitting instrument. Related to this, the target group of an instrument can, in addition to the clients of social workers, also be defined as the social workers themselves. They represent the professional perspective of empowerment in the lives of their clients. Furthermore, a good match between context-specific elements and more generic elements in item building seems promising. The extent to which the target group is involved in the use of the instrument and in the processing of the data depends on the organizations that use the instrument, the developers state that they have no influence on this. While using the various instruments, social workers found out that the measurements of empowerment, in addition to the numerical value, also form a relevant and practical 'conversation tool' for social workers, with which they discuss possibilities and limitations with their clients.
- Publication
Journal of Social Intervention: Theory & Practice, 2019, Vol 28, Issue 4, p24
- ISSN
1876-8830
- Publication type
Academic Journal
- DOI
10.18352/jsi.584