Background: The premise of community advocacy is to empower residents by increasing their capacity to address and change neighborhood and structural factors that contribute to adverse health outcomes. An underlying assumption is that community residents will advocate for public policy and other changes. However, limited empirical evidence exists on community residents' perceived ability to advocate for neighborhood change. In this study, we characterized perceived neighborhood control and efficacy for neighborhood change and evaluated independent associations between efficacy and control beliefs and sociodemographic factors, community involvement, and perceptions of social environment.
Methods: Cross-sectional data from 488 African American adults were analyzed to describe efficacy and control beliefs and to characterize bivariate associations between these beliefs and sociodemographic factors, social environment, and community involvement variables. Variables with significant relationships (p < 0.10) were included in a multivariate logistic regression model to identify factors having significant independent associations with efficacy and control beliefs.
Results: Overall, beliefs about neighborhood control and confidence were varied, yet approximately half of residents (49 and 55 %, respectively) reported having a little control over things that happen in their neighborhood and a little confidence in their ability to change things where they live. The likelihood of reporting confidence to make neighborhood improvements increased with greater collective efficacy (OR = 1.78, 95 % CI = 1.19-1.31, p = 0.002). In addition, participants who were involved in a community organization were more likely to report confidence to improve their neighborhood (OR = 2.03, 95 % CI = 1.21-3.42, p = 0.01).
Conclusion: Efforts are needed to improve residents' ability to become positive agents of change in their community. Creating a research infrastructure within academic community partnerships that focus on strengthening advocacy and public policy may improve resident's efficacy and ability to seek and encourage neighborhood change.
Keywords: African Americans; Collective efficacy; Neighborhood; Perception; Social environment.