Effective response by community service agencies to clientele needs is an essential part of community development. A personnel screening instrument, a model for predicting different types of adaptation to occupational stress, is suggested as a means of increasing the responsiveness of service agencies to their local communities. Proposing the use of the model as a screening instrument stems from the realization that agency efforts to redefine staff roles to better serve community needs will produce stress for their personnel. The model has three major explanatory components: personal evaluation of the occupational role by the incumbent; the kinds of social support one receives through primary and secondary contacts, which tend to challenge or reinforce the incumbent; and the investment of personal resources which an individual has made in the occupation. The combination of responses to all the variables in the model can be used to predict adaptation of role behavior and thus to assess an individual's capacity to cope adequately with the stress of a changing occupational role. An empirical test of the model has provided support for the validity of its constructs. (NH)