An Evaluation of Community Development Programs in Illinois

Abstract

An evaluation of the impact of 29 community development programs in Southern Illinois shows that they probably did have an effect on the services available in the target communities, but their effect on participation is only partial. Using a probability sample of 29 program and 32 nonprogram communities, this study tests the hypothesis that community development programs have an effect upon and variables at the community level. The process variables used are voting participation and the number of candidates running for local elections. The content variables are four cumulative, unidimensional scales of the institutional structure of the communities. The study is longitudinal, covering approximately twenty years from 1950 to 1970. Scalogram Analysis (Guttman Scaling) is used to create the scales and multiple regression techniques are used to test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that community development programs are correlated with improvements in elite participation and in the scale of rural services, noneconomic services, and health services. The community development programs evaluated in this study all grew out of the Community Development Department at Southern Illinois University. This department has been active in the Southern Illinois region since the early 1950s, and consequently the time period covered is approximately 1950 to 1970. During this time, the Community Development Department engaged in community development programs in more than 100 communities in the region. Although community development has various meanings, the type applied in Southern Illinois during this period is well known and was wide spread. It is the locality development model of Rothman (1970) and the self-study style of community development of S. T. Bruyn (1963). It is the style of community development popularized in the 1950s by such scholars as Richard Poston (1953) Irwin T. Sanders (1953) and Roland Warren (1956). It was applied during the 1950s at the national level in a number of underdeveloped countries with great fanfare, notably in the Philippines and India. It strongly emphasized such themes as self-help, determination of felt needs, and citizen involvement and commitment. In the United States, these projects typically entailed the formation of community wide steering committees, the execution of one or several needs surveys, usually by community people themselves, and the formation of numerous study and action committees to deal with various aspects of community life-e.g. housing, health and health services, or education. These projects lasted from six months to two years or more, with great emphasis on citizen participation in committees, task forces and town meetings. Usually outside consulting was provided by a nearby university, although the initiative and most of the resources for the projects normally came from the community itself. OBJECTIVES OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND THE DETERMINATION OF SUCCESS