The Community Readiness Model: Results From the Field

Over fifteen years ago, the Community Readiness Model (CRM) was developed to help foster community change (Oetting et al., 1995). The rationale for developing CRM was that by measuring the readiness of the community to take action on an issue, the community could better match their actions to their level of readiness.  Since that time, the model’s applications have been numerous and diverse, including alcohol and other drug use, HIV/AIDs, obesity and physical activity, Hepatitis C, heart health, and environmental and transportation issues.  Important features of the model include 9 defined stages of readiness and 6 dimensions of readiness (efforts, knowledge of efforts, leadership, climate, issue knowledge, resources).  Based on key informant interviews, scores between 1 and 9 are calculated for each dimension. 

In this paper, we examine the results of 117 community readiness assessments  conducted over the past 5 years, specifically investigating the distribution and factor structure of the dimensions.

The mean score for the dimension of “efforts” was nearly 2 points higher than that for the other dimensions (M=5.8; SD=1.1), falling between the “preparation” and “initiation” stages, suggesting that its measurement scale may not be consistent with that of the other dimensions.  The results also suggest that the majority of scores for each dimension fall into a relatively small range (less than a 1 point difference), for a measurement scale with a 9-point range.  This may reflect self-selection of communities who choose to use CRM or that the measurement is not sufficiently sensitive to reflect important differences in the readiness of communities.  None of the 117 assessments resulted in the highest possible score of “9” for any dimension, and there were very few “7” and “8” scores. 

CFA findings suggest that five of the dimension scores load onto two factors with one factor comprised of leadership and resources, and a second factor comprised of knowledge of efforts, community climate and community knowledge of issue (CFI=.97). 

Overall, the CRM may benefit from a revision that specifically examines 1) the consistency of the measurement scales across dimensions; 2) whether the stages of readiness delineate differences in the readiness of communities to address an issue in a way that is helpful to communities in increasing their readiness levels; and 3) whether each of the dimensions substantively adds to the measurement of the construct of readiness.