Many practitioners use culturally responsive approaches for community development; however, identity-oriented frameworks may enhance holistic engagement with communities and foster increased participatory collaboration. The current study identifies components of identity narratives within a community-based health-promotion initiative focused on rural food access through a culturally responsive lens to develop a preliminary theory of identity-oriented evaluation. Data were collected with members of the community coalition in one county participating in the rural health-promotion program. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used to identify themes related to identity construction by participants. Themes included community identity, economic narratives of health, personal identity, descriptions of coalition, cultural food preferences, identity constructions around health, community-first perspective, collaboration across community sectors, slowness of change, and social observations related to behavior change. Looking at the themes in a rural health-promotion context, the authors discuss implications for engaging in community development using identity as an entry point for participatory work.

Communities in rural America have experienced significant decline over the past century. Professionals working within these communities, such as extension or community development professionals, may leverage their position as trusted sources to decrease negative outcomes associated with novel and emerging societal problems, such as rural stress. This study was grounded in the community capitals framework and sought to examine the importance of capitals relative to the perception of rural stress. A sample of extension agents from a southeastern land-grant university in the United States provided rating and ranking data. A modified Borda Count and weighted ranking score were computed to generate a heuristic ranking of capitals relative to importance to rural stress. Human and natural capital were consistently regarded as highly important, while cultural and built–financial capital were consistently sorted to the bottom. Therefore, human and natural capital may represent critical entry points for professionals to develop programming related to rural stress perceptions and coping mechanisms. Overall, the results of this study support the continued use of the community capitals framework to guide community development strategies that address rural stress concerns and provides evidence to inform rural development policies and interventions. Such strategies should involve community members to facilitate an inside-out approach and develop sustainable solutions based on local knowledge and needs.

The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a robust scale, based on the community capital framework, to provide an empirical measure of community perceptions. The proposed measure was...