Personal profile

About

Michael Gearhart received his PhD in 2017 from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. His dissertation developed mutual efficacy. Mutual efficacy is defined as group members’ beliefs that collective action can be successful at achieving group goals. His current research will further refine mutual efficacy, assess its relationship with collective action in communities, and develop strategies aimed at facilitating collective action in communities.

While pursuing his doctorate, Dr. Gearhart worked as a research assistant at the National Initiative on Mixed-income Communities, the Community Innovation Network, and the Dr. Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research, and Education.  He also has five years’ worth of practice experience as a research associate for Leverage Point Development.

Related documents

Research Interests

  • Collective Action
  • Community Building
  • Asset-Based Community Development
  • Community Engagement
  • Generative Dialogue
  • Mixed Methods Statistical Methods: Multilevel Modeling (Curran-Bauer Analytics) Structural Equation Modeling, and Latent Class Analysis
  • Exploratory Factor Analysis
  • Confirmatory Factor Analysis
  • Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis
  • Community Assessment: Neighborhood Asset Mapping, SWOT Analysis
  • Stakeholder Interviews
  • Survey Design Data sets: Inter-University Consortium for Social and Political Research (ICPSR) and Seattle Neighborhoods and Crime Survey (SNCS)

Disciplines

  • Social Work