| Abstract: | Lack of understanding in the competence of community workers is a knowledge gap in the current body of literature. Developing a community workers' competence scale is helpful for understanding and improving the community workers' competence. This paper has reported an exploratory study that developed and validated a community worker' competence scale in Shanghai. Social work development and government administrative power jointly influence the competence needed by community workers. This study comprises three phases. First, a pool of items was generated from government policies, literature on community development and feedbacks of frontline community workers. Bogo's hierarchy competence model was adopted to organize these items. Second, a 30-item scale was formulated through explanatory factor analysis. Assessment, building relationship, practicing bylaws and regulations, program development, and serving for people in need are the five factors included in the scale. The psychometric analysis demonstrated acceptable face and content validity, construct validity, convergent and discriminatory validity, and internal consistency. This scale is promisingly useful in recruiting, evaluating and educating community workers for administrators and educators. |
