Enhancing Community Participation in Development Activities: Psychological Elements that Matters.

Abstract

Abstract This study determined the relationship between each of the psychological variables (attitude, self-concept and needs disposition) and participation of members in community associations’ development activities and the degree of contribution of each of the variables to variation in the participation. The study adopted a survey correlation design to determine the status of the chosen psychological variables and the level of members’ participation in the CBAs development activities as well as to examine the relationships between the psychological variables and the level of participation. The population of the study was 15,000 members of 496 CBAs in Kwara State but only 1170 were selected as sample for the purpose of the study while 1008 respondents who completed the instrument adequately were used for the analysis. The sample was selected using multi-stage sampling technique. Two principal research instruments were used. They are: psychological factor questionnaire (PFQ) and participation assessment scale (PAS). The PFQ contains items that measured the three domains of psychological factors. These are items on attitude, self-concept and needs dispositions. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed. Precisely, the information and data were coded as appropriate; frequency counts, weighted averages and standard deviations were obtained. In addition, correlation, one way analysis of variance and regression analyses were run using SPSS version 16. The findings of the study revealed that each of the variables of needs disposition, self-concept and attitude correlates positively with level of participation. Furthermore, all the three variables from the one-way analysis of variance had significant influence on level of participation at f (3, 1004) = 8.72, P<0.01. Also, needs disposition and attitude of members of CBAs made significant contribution to the variation in participation level while self-concept did not, while psychological factor made 22.0 percent contribution to variation in the level of participation. It was therefore concluded that psychological factor with prominence on attitude of participants and needs disposition should be recognized in effort to increase CBA member’s participation in community development activities of the association. The study recommends that the search for factors that matter should not be limited to psychological factor or the variables examined in the study.

Keywords: Community, Participation, Development Activities, Psychological Elements