Based on a literature review drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and public policy, Stern and Seifert of the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania suggest documentation and evaluation strategies that artists, cultural and community organizations, philanthropists, and public agencies could take to improve the quality of knowledge about the social impact of arts-based civic engagement work.
 

Part 1 of the paper explores definitions, key concepts, and theories about civic engagement, the arts and culture, and the relationship between these two spheres of community life. The authors discuss three theories of action—didactic, discursive, and ecological—that is, ways that the arts could influence patterns of civic engagement.
 

Part 2 offers practical considerations for evaluation in areas of methodological issues and data collection strategies based on a set of challenges in moving from theory to actual measurement of change. Stern and Seifert describe these challenges: unit of analysis—what or whom to study; causal inference, the relationship of the arts-based engagement activity to effects; selection bias or understanding compared-to-what; retrospective data, the limits of data gathering via methods that rely on the unreliable faculty of memory; and obtrusiveness, the impact of an intrusive methodology—such as an audience survey or pre/post-test—on one’s findings. The authors assess the major data-gathering strategies of social science and recommend that collectively these methods can be used to build a body of evidence on the role of the arts in civic engagement and social action.
 

In Part 3, Stern and Seifert offer recommendations for evaluating effects of arts-based civic engagement at the program, regional, and initiative scales.