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Counseling children at a helpline: chatting or calling?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In a quantitative content analysis, the telephone-based and Web-based support of the Dutch child helpline were studied. Both adult judges and the children themselves indicated that the quality of chat conversations was better than that of telephone conversations. Both the chat and telephone service succeeded in improving children's well-being and decreasing the perceived burden of their problems. The findings lend support to offer a combined telephone-based and Web-based support for child helplines. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ruben Fukkink, Jo Hermanns Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Interpersonal mediators linking acculturation stressors to subsequent internalizing symptoms and self-esteem in latino adolescentsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The specific aim of this study was to examine pathways leading to internalizing symptoms and self-esteem in Latino adolescents. Adolescent feelings of interpersonal humiliation, family conflict and commitment, and friendships with peers were investigated as potential mediators linking acculturation stress to subsequent adolescent self-esteem and internalizing symptoms. Path analyses on data from a sample of 288 Latino adolescents (average age 15 years; 66% foreign-born) showed that acculturation conflicts and perceived discrimination were risk factors for both internalizing problems at baseline and parent-adolescent confli...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Paul Richard Smokowski, Martica Bacallao, Rachel Lee Buchanan Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Tuning in to kids: an emotion-focused parenting program - initial findings from a community trialEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study evaluated a new group parenting program, Tuning in to Kids, which taught emotion coaching skills to parents of preschool children. In a randomized control trial, 218 primary caregiver parents of children aged 4.0-5.11 years completed questionnaires assessing parent emotion socialization (emotion coaching vs. emotion dismissing), parent emotional competence, parent wellbeing and child behavior. Assessment occurred at preintervention and 10 weeks later. Parents randomized to the intervention condition (n=107) attended a 6-session parenting program. Results showed parents in the intervention condition reported sign...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Sophie S. Havighurst, Katherine R. Wilson, Ann E. Harley, Margot R. Prior Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

HUI M[amacr]lama O Ke Kai: a positive prevention-based youth development program based on native hawaiian values and activitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Evaluation of after-school programs that are culturally and place-based and promote positive youth development among minority and indigenous youths has not been widely published. The present evaluation is the first of its kind of an after-school, youth-risk prevention program called Hui Mal[amacr]ma O Ke Kai (HMK), that emphasizes Native Hawaiian values and activities to promote positive youth development for fifth and sixth graders (N=110) in a rural Native Hawaiian community. Results indicated positive gains on youth self-reports in Native Hawaiian values, self-esteem, antidrug use, violence prevention strategies, and he...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Earl S. Hishinuma, Janice Y. Chang,, Angela Sy, Malia F. Greaney, Katherine A. Morris, Ami C. Scronce, Davis Rehuher,, Stephanie T. Nishimura Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Building strong communities: an evaluation of a neighborhood leadership program in a diverse urban areaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The purpose of this study was to describe and evaluate an intervention used to train neighborhood leaders about community organizing and to enhance leadership skills. A mixed-method design was used which included (a) a pre- and posttest assessment of 83 participants, and (b) qualitative descriptive interviews of 33 participants. Over half of the participants in the study were from ethnic minority groups (Latino or Cambodian). At posttest assessment, the participants improved in leadership skills (p=.001) and experience (p=.001) subscales. The qualitative interviews revealed that participants continued to be active in their...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Cecilia Ayón, Cheryl D. Lee Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Community involvement and victimization at school: an analysis through family, personal and social adjustmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study analyzes the impact of adolescents' community involvement on victimization by peers at school through various indicators of family, personal and social adjustment (openness of communication with mother and father, life satisfaction, social self-esteem, and loneliness). Participating in the project were 565 adolescents aged 11 to 18 (51% male) drawn from secondary schools in Spain. Statistical analyses were conducted using bivariate correlations, the t test and structural equation modeling. Results indicated an indirect and protective influence of community involvement, openness of communication with paren...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Teresa Isabel Jiménez, Gonzalo Musitu,, Manuel Jesús Ramos, Sergio Murgui Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Community attitudes towards culture-influenced mental illness: scrupulosity vs. nonreligious OCD among orthodox jewsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Culture may particularly influence community attitudes towards mental illness, when the illness itself is shaped by a cultural context. To explore the influence of culture-specific, religious symptoms on Orthodox Jewish community attitudes, the authors compared the attitudes of 169 Orthodox Jews, who randomly viewed one of two vignettes describing either religious or nonreligious obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Results indicate that though participants were equally likely to perceive both vignettes as mental illness, they were less likely to endorse psychological/medical explanatory models and help-seeking, and conver...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - October 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steven Pirutinsky, David H. Rosmarin, Kenneth I. Pargament Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Family and community influences on educational outcomes among appalachian youthEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent research has shown how quantifiable aspects of community context affect a wide range of behaviors and outcomes. Due partially to the historical development of this field, currently published work focuses on urban rather than rural areas. We draw upon data from a longitudinal study of families and health in Appalachia - the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS), and an ethnographically based interview tool - the Life Trajectory Interview for Youth (LTI-Y), to examine the impact of community and family poverty and educational attainment on educational goals and attainment among rural white youth (n=200). Exposure to fami...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 22, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ryan Brown, William E. Copeland, E. Jane Costello, Alaattin Erkanli, Carol M. Worthman Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Promoting wellness: integrating community and positive psychologyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article aims to tie together the themes and theories of community psychology and positive psychology and highlight how a synthesis of the fields can help better promote community wellness. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Stephen M. Schueller Tags: Commentaries Source Type: journals

Initial evaluation of a cultural approach to implementation of evidence-based parenting interventions in American Indian communitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The current investigation puts forth the authors' conceptualization of a cultural approach to implementing evidence-based practices with American Indian (AI) families. Their approach involves two phases, the motivational phase, which sets an historical context for current difficulties; and the intervention phase, which links evidence-based skills with cultural traditions, beliefs, and values. Herein, they present preliminary evidence for the efficacy of the intervention phase, overlaid onto the Incredible Years parenting program (Webster-Stratton, 1992). Forty-nine families with American Indian children, ages 3-11 (26 boys...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Renda Dionne, Betsy Davis, Lisa Sheeber, Luke Madrigal Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Community violence exposure and aggression among urban adolescents: testing a cognitive mediator modelEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines the impact of community violence on behavior through cognitive mediators: normative beliefs about aggression and self-efficacy to control aggression. Self-report surveys were completed by two samples (cross-sectional and longitudinal) of early adolescent, urban African American youth. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate a theoretical model, and results demonstrated a good fit with both samples; that is more exposure to community violence was associated with more retaliatory beliefs supporting aggression, which led to less self-efficacy to control aggression, which led to more aggressive be...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Susan D. McMahon, Erika D. Felix, Jane A. Halpert, Lara A. N. Petropoulos Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Increasing students' perceived sociopolitical empowerment through online and face-to-face community psychology seminarsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Community psychology theorists underline the importance of promoting sociopolitical empowerment, but few studies have been conducted on the evaluation of the efficacy of empowering programs among university students. The authors report two studies: the first, with 216 psychology majors, compared the efficacy of face-to-face and online community psychology seminars in promoting perceived sociopolitical empowerment and self efficacy. The second, with 170 psychology majors, explored if differences in teachers experiences affected students sociopolitical empowerment. Results of ANOVA, on measures of empowerment and self-effica...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Donata Francescato, Andrea Solimeno, Minou Ella Mebane, Manuela Tomai Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Resilience factors in families living with people with mental illnessesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In South Africa, a substantial burden is placed on families living with people with mental illnesses. The aim of this study was to identify resilience factors in families living in an underprivileged area, caring for people with mental illnesses. Data was obtained from family representatives (N=34) using semistructured interviews and a set of seven self-report, quantitative questionnaires during the course of a once-off interview. The results of the qualitative analysis show that the most commonly cited resilience factors are religion and spirituality, and personal characteristics of individual family members. Both these f...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Liezl Jonker, Abraham P. Greeff Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Escaping homelessness: anticipated and perceived facilitatorsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
One study with two distinct sections was conducted to identify factors facilitating escape from homelessness. In Section 1, 58 homeless individuals rated possible facilitators of escape (factors they believed would help them become more independent and self-sufficient). In Section 2, 80 participants who had already exited homelessness rated the same facilitators (factors that would have helped them become more independent and self-sufficient) and the importance of actual factors that facilitated escape. When rating factors in the hypothetical, both groups rated obtaining housing as being particularly important for facilita...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Allisha Patterson, Roger Tweed Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Network structural influences on the adoption of evidence-based prevention in communitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examined the impact of key variables in coalition communication networks, centralization and density, on the adoption of evidence-based substance abuse prevention. Data were drawn from a network survey and a corresponding community leader survey that measured leader attitudes and practices toward substance abuse prevention programs. Two types of coalition networks were measured: advice-seeking and discussion relations. For each community, we computed network-level measurements (n=20), and then used multiple linear regression. Results showed that adoption outcomes were associated with a decrease in centralization...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kayo Fujimoto, Thomas W. Valente, Mary Ann Pentz Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Translational research in action: implementation of the communities that care prevention system in 12 communitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Translational research (Pentz, Jasuja, Rohrbach, Sussman, & Bardo, 2006; Woolf, 2008) is concerned with moving advances in prevention science into everyday practice in communities, yet there are few models for ensuring this transfer of knowledge. Communities That Care (CTC) provides a planned, structured, and data-driven system that trains community prevention coalitions to select evidence-based programs and replicate them with strong implementation fidelity. In this article, the authors describe the implementation of the CTC prevention system over a 5-year period in 12 communities participating in the Community Youth Deve...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - August 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Abigail A. Fagan, Koren Hanson, J. David Hawkins, Michael W. Arthur Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

The impact of immigrants on the sense of communityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated the sense of community among residents in the Spanish city of Malaga and the relationship between the components of the sense of community and the quality of life. Given that the phenomenon of immigration is a fact of city life, the authors examine how such coexistence could affect the sense of community and the quality of life as perceived by the residents in different city neighborhoods. The study was conducted in an urban context; 1,600 residents were included in the sample. The sense of community is measured using six dimensions: connection, belonging, support, safety, empowerment, and participa...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 5, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Isabel Hombrados-Mendieta, Luis Gomez-Jacinto, Juan Manuel Dominguez-Fuentes Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Brief report of community ownership of local coalitions: community members' perspectivesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although community ownership has been described as critical to the long-term effectiveness of local coalitions, a lack of consensus exists regarding what community ownership is and what exactly is being owned. This exploratory study examined community ownership of coalitions that address domestic violence from the perspective of community members who initiated and operated these coalitions. Qualitative data collection methods included interviews, observations, and archival review of coalition records. Findings expand current conceptualizations of what community ownership is and how it develops. Results may inform future re...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Pamela J. Cox Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Integrated dual disorders treatmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study demonstrates the potential of such an integrated program and points to areas for further research in housing services. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jack Tsai, Michelle P. Salyers, Angela L. Rollins, Mike McKasson, Melissa L. Litmer Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Psychometric properties of the volunteer functions inventory with Chinese studentsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The authors report an evaluation of the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Volunteer Functions Inventory on a sample of university student volunteers. Reliabilities were high for four out of the six scales of the Inventory (Values, Career, Social, and Understanding) in terms of internal consistency. Items in these four scales also yielded a clean structure in an exploratory factor analysis. Making new friends was found to be a motive, which was separate from sustaining friendships and separate from other motives captured by the Inventory. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the superiority of a 6-factor...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Joseph Wu, T. Wing Lo, Elaine S.C. Liu Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Academic achievement among adolescents in Cambodia: does caregiver trauma matter?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
How will hostilities occurring around today's world influence future generations in affected areas? Cambodia may be one place where this question can be answered, and academic achievement is one way to measure these effects. Cambodian adolescent/caregiver dyads (n=288) were examined for links between caregiver trauma history and adolescent academic achievement, using self reports of adolescents' relationships with caregivers, caregivers' reports of trauma history and symptoms (Harvard Trauma Questionnaire), and school records of adolescents' academic achievement. Fourteen percent of caregivers met criteria for posttraumati...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Sothy Eng, Miriam Mulsow, Harrington Cleveland, Sybil L. Hart Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Network ties and mean lies: a relational approach to relational aggressionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The current study considers how the structure of peer networks facilitates or constrains children's opportunities to engage in relationally aggressive behaviors such as social exclusion and rumor spreading. Specifically, the influence of two network features, centrality and density, on relational aggression are explored using grade-level behavioral and social network data collected on a demographically diverse sample of 144 third through eighth grade urban elementary school students. As hypothesized, these network features influenced levels of teacher-rated and peer-nominated relational aggression beyond the effects of dem...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jennifer Watling Neal Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Neighborhood-specific and general social support: which buffers the effect of neighborhood disorder on depression?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Is neighborhood-specific social support the most effective type of social support for buffering the effect of neighborhood disorder on depression? Matching theory suggests that it is. The authors extend the research on neighborhood disorder and adult depression by showing that individuals who have higher levels of both general and neighborhood-specific social relationships, measured by social support and neighborhood social ties, are less vulnerable to negative effects of neighborhood disorder. Using the Community, Crime, and Health Survey, the authors found that neighborhood disorder's association with depression is lower...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Joongbaeck Kim, Catherine E. Ross Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Improving middle school climate through teacher-centered changeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A collaborative school-based intervention aimed at modifying relationships among administrators and teachers was implemented in three middle and junior high schools. Across the intervention schools, teachers were active collaborators in identifying problems and then articulating and implementing customized interventions to redress those problems. Analyses of both teacher (N=180) and student (N=2,631) data provide support for positive outcomes. Teachers' perceptions of school climate improved, and longitudinal models suggested that these improvements mediated the impact of treatment on teacher reports of affiliation and aca...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jean E. Rhodes, Paul M. Camic, Michael Milburn, Sarah R. Lowe Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Empowerment and peer support: structure and process of self-help in a consumer-run center for individuals with mental illnessEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Personal empowerment is a guiding philosophy of many mental health service programs, but there has been little empirical research on the empowerment process in these programs. The authors examine social processes and consumer orientations within a self-help drop-in center for individuals with psychiatric disabilities, using intensive interviews and focus groups. They investigate motives for consumer involvement, bases for program retention, and processes of participant change. Motives for involvement in the center were primarily instrumental, whereas the bases of retention were more often maintaining social support and dev...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Russell K. Schutt, E. Sally Rogers Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Frameworks: a community-based approach to preventing youth suicideEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study evaluated the pilot implementation of a community-based youth suicide prevention project guided by an ecological perspective. One hundred fifty-seven adults representing various constituencies from educators to health care providers and 131 ninth-grade students received training and participated in the evaluation. Analysis of questionnaire data collected before and after the trainings indicated significant increases in knowledge about youth suicide and belief in the usefulness of mental health care among adults and students. Adults' preparedness to help youth also increased. Students' sense of responsibility to ...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - July 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kristine Baber, Gretchen Bean Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Disparities in sense of community: true race differences or differential item functioning?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The sense of community index (SCI) has been widely used to measure psychological sense of community (SOC). Furthermore, SOC has been found to differ among racial groups. Because different ethnic groups have different cultural and historical experiences that may lead to different interpretations of measurement items, it is important to know whether the instrument used to measure the construct of interest has equivalency in measurement across groups or if the instrument exhibits differential item functioning (DIF). Examining DIF in the SCI helps assure that subgroup comparisons identify true differences in SOC between Blacks...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 8, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Donna L. Coffman, Rhonda BeLue Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

A community-driven behavioral health approach for older adults: lessons learnedEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This paper examines the lessons learned from the implementation of the Sembrando Salud/Sowing Wellness integrated healthcare program in rural Southeastern Arizona. The isolation and lack of resources characterizing the experience of many seniors in this ethnically diverse community, combined with the impact that depression and diabetes have on their lives, dramatically pointed to the need for depression prevention and treatment activities delivered in a manner that recognizes factors that inhibit participation in behavioral health interventions. The relationship between physical health, especially diabetes, and depression ...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Anita H. Wood, Anthony J. Alberta Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Linking formal and informal support in multiproblem low-income families: the role of the family managerEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines how families coordinate the diverse strategies. A sample of 150 multiproblem, low-income families was surveyed by means of an interview that comprised three open questions: Which problems do you feel exist in your family? What strategies does your family use to cope with each of these problems? How does your family bring together the different types of support? Main findings suggest that a member of the family (the family manager) coordinates and links informal and formal types of support. Families do not adopt a passive attitude toward problem solving because they activate and manage multiple formal an...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Liliana Sousa, Sofia Rodrigues Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Damaged youth: prevalence of community violence exposure and implications for adolescent well-being in post-conflict Northern IrelandEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As Northern Ireland transitions to a post-conflict society the nature of violent victimization and its influence on adolescents following the "Troubles" becomes an even more important area of interest. Adolescents are particularly at risk of victimization and associated social, emotional, and psychological health problems. In this analysis of the fifth year of the Belfast Youth Development Study (BYDS), the prevalence and implications of exposure to violence is examined for a sample of 3,828 young people (aged 15-16 years). Knowledge of violent events was particularly prevalent suggesting that the social and psychological ...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kareena McAloney, Patrick McCrystal, Andrew Percy, Claire McCartan Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Longitudinal relationships between neighboring behavior and depressive symptoms in Hispanic older adults in Miami, FloridaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines the relationship between neighboring behavior and depressive symptoms across 3 years in a prospective study of 273 community-dwelling, Hispanic older adults in Miami, Florida. The analyses extend the literature by testing for a bidirectional or reciprocal relationship between neighboring behavior and depressive symptoms over time and examining the relationship between these variables in Hispanic older adults, a group at risk of developing depressive symptoms. Structural Equation Modeling with a cross-lagged panel design showed that depressive symptoms were unrelated to subsequent neighboring behavior. H...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Scott C. Brown, Craig A. Mason, Tatiana Perrino, Ikkei Hirama, Rosa Verdeja, Arnold R. Spokane, Maria Cristina Cruza-Guet, Barbara Lopez, Hilda Pantin, José Szapocznik Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Impact of the 1996 welfare reform on child and family well-beingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article examined the impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Using a sample of 1,681 single mothers living in poverty, this study compared the effects of economic well-being and home environment scores on their children during pre- and post-Welfare Reform years. Following the 1996 Welfare Reform, fewer mothers received cash payments, and those who did received lower payments, while more mothers worked at low-paying jobs. Negative impacts were more pronounced for less educated mothers. The effects of family income and home environment scores on children were diff...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kyunghee Lee Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Organizational socialization of volunteers: the effect on their intention to remainEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Identifying the factors affecting the retention of volunteers in their activities is one of the main objectives for researchers and volunteer managers. There have been many studies with this aim and many factors affecting sustained volunteerism have been identified. However, one of the limits of these models is the low percentage of explained variance, which indicates that there are other additional factors, yet unidentified, which may have an important influence in the prediction of durability as a volunteer. In our study, we intend to analyze the effect that some factors of organizational socialization of volunteers have...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: M. Carmen Hidalgo, Pilar Moreno Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Promoting evidence-based practices: the adoption of a prevention support system in community settingsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Prevention support systems (PSSs) are designed to help communities implement evidence-based practices (EBPs). Little is known about the factors that influence their adoption. In this article, we examined adoption of a PSS for substance abuse prevention called Getting To Outcomes (GTO)® among staff in two community coalitions with varying levels of exposure to it over a 2-year period. A multistage regression model was used to determine the relative predictive power of organizational, innovation-related, and practitioner characteristics on adoption. Findings indicate that GTO adoption occurred through increased exposure, es...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Sarah B. Hunter, Susan M. Paddock, Patricia Ebener, A. K. Burkhart, Matthew Chinman Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Residential mobility and exposure to neighborhood crime: risks for young children's aggressionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This three-year longitudinal study investigated associations between residential mobility, neighborhood crime, and aggression during middle childhood. Participants were 460 children (M age = 6.9 years, SD = 1.1) residing in a disadvantaged city in the Northeastern United States. Residential mobility was determined from school records, teachers provided ratings of aggression, and city police reports of call complaints provided information on neighborhood crime. Neighborhoods were classified as average or high crime. Results showed that mobility and neighborhood crime were significantly (p (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - June 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Maria E. Parente, Joseph L. Mahoney Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

From program participant to engaged citizen: a developmental journeyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
American youth who participate in both school-based and community-based programs during high school remain more civically engaged than their contemporaries throughout adulthood. However, few studies have examined the developmental processes through which participation in a youth directed program promotes civic responsibility. In this qualitative study, 23 males and 9 females took part in one of five focus groups to talk about their experiences as members of a youth empowerment center in the southwest. The results reveal a three-phased process model of development from program participant to civically engaged youth. Each of...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 9, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Lynne Borden, Joyce Serido Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

The effect of neighborhood disadvantage on proactive and reactive aggressionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The current study examined the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on proactive and reactive aggression in a sample of 126 children (66% male) identified as aggressive. Sixth-grade proactive and reactive aggression was regressed on fifth-grade proactive and reactive aggression, neighborhood disadvantage, gender, and race. Findings suggested that neighborhood disadvantage was a significant unique predictor of proactive but not reactive aggression. Implications for findings are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Paula J. Fite, Porche' Wynn, John E. Lochman, Karen C. Wells Tags: Brief Reports Source Type: journals

Depression and social context: primary supporter relationship factors associated with depressive symptoms among a disadvantaged population with HIV/AIDSEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Social support is associated with better health outcomes among chronically ill individuals, yet support receipt can be stressful. The study examined supporter relationship factors, among n=156 main-supporter-HIV+support-recipient dyads, associated with recipient's depression (CES-D[ge]16). Results indicated that support recipient's depression was associated with a 3.6-times higher odds of main supporters' depression, a 2.5-times higher odds of supporters' being a friend or same-generatin kin (versus partner or other kin), and a 3.7-times higher odds of support recipients' financial reliance on the supporter. Support recipi...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Amy R. Knowlton, Aaron Curry, Wei Hua, Lawrence Wissow Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Adolescents' exposure to community violence: are neighborhood youth organizations protective?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined two non-competing explanations for this finding. First, at the individual level, we tested the hypothesis that access to a greater variety of neighborhood youth organizations predicts adolescents' participation in organized community-based activities, which, in turn, protects against community violence exposure. Second, at the neighborhood level, we tested the hypothesis that lower violent crime rates explain the inverse relation between neighborhood youth organization variety and community violence exposure. Our findings supported the latter of these two mechanisms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Source: Jou...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Margo Gardner, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Cultural relevance as program-to-community alignmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Calls for cultural sensitivity in the design and implementation of human services programs have become a standard response to the increasing diversity among the families and communities being served. In this article, we take a critical look at the construct, using data from a multi-year evaluation of a statewide family support program. We examine how selected, locally implemented programs operationalize the state program's cultural sensitivity standard, using both etic and emic approaches; that is, we apply extant cultural competence definitions to assess program cultural sensitivity and document how the program staff arti...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jayanthi Mistry, Francine Jacobs, Leah Jacobs Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

The assessment of positivity and negativity in social networks: the reliability and validity of the social relationships indexEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Social Relationships Index (SRI) was designed to examine positivity and negativity in social relationships. Unique features of this scale include its brevity and the ability to examine relationship positivity and negativity at the level of the specific individual and social network. The SRI's psychometric properties were examined in three studies. The SRI demonstrated good psychometric properties, including test-retest reliability for the assessment of positivity and negativity, and of relationship classifications across social networks. Additionally, discriminant and convergent validity was established with existing s...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Rebecca A. Campo, Bert N. Uchino, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Allison Vaughn, Maija Reblin,, Timothy W. Smith Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

The mediating role of social support in the community environment - psychological distress link among low-income African American womenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Living in a disordered community is negatively associated with psychological well-being. We investigated the role of social support in the link between community environment and psychological distress in a sample of 152 African American women from low socioeconomic backgrounds in a large metropolitan southeastern city. Structural equation modeling revealed that the association between low quality of community environment and increased psychological distress was accounted for by the mediating role of social support. Findings suggest the importance of social support in improving the mental health of African American women fr...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jielu Lin, Martie P. Thompson, Nadine J. Kaslow Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Redefining the American quilt: definitions and experiences of community among ethnically diverse lesbian and bisexual womenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Lesbian and bisexual women from diverse backgrounds possess unique viewpoints regarding the meanings and functions of "community." Despite this, few studies have explored sexual minority women's understanding of and relationship to their communities. The present study employed qualitative research methods to investigate the meanings and functions of community among a sample of ethnically diverse lesbian and bisexual women (N=49). From the participants' responses in semistructured focus groups and key informant interviews, three core constructs emerged: community concepts (relevance, meaning), community-based strain (racism...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - April 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Keren Lehavot, Kimberly F. Balsam, Gemma D. Ibrahim-Wells Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Testing the factor structure of a scale to assess african american acculturation: a confirmatory factor analysisEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Research has pointed to the important role that acculturation plays in understanding a range of physical health behaviors as well as psychological functioning, but only a few studies have attempted to establish reliable and valid measures of African American acculturation. The scale developed by Snowden and Hines (1999) to assess African American acculturation provided an interesting line of inquiry for the present study because no further validation studies have been conducted to assess the underlying factor structure of this measure since its introduction several years ago. Confirmatory factor analysis techniques were us...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Robert J. Reid, Tiffany L. Brown, N. Andrew Peterson, Lonnie Snowden, Alice Hines Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Battered women know bestEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Journal of Community Psychology)
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, Belle Liang Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: journals

Housing stability among homeless individuals with serious mental illness participating in housing first programsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article presents findings from an exploratory study of three programs using the Housing First approach to provide permanent supportive housing for single, homeless adults with serious mental illness and often co-occurring substance-related disorders. This approach provides direct, or nearly direct, access to housing that is intended to be permanent without requiring sobriety or psychiatric treatment. Findings from the three programs examined for this study indicate that the Housing First approach may help the hardest-to-serve chronically homeless population achieve housing stability. Of the 80 participants tracked ove...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Carol Pearson, Ann Elizabeth Montgomery, Gretchen Locke Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Beyond survival: tracing individual empowerment processes in a poor chilean settlementEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Based on the life histories of residents from La Victoria, a poor settlement in Santiago, Chile, this study reconstructed the central biographic elements in individual empowerment processes, linking them with the sociocultural context in which they occurred. Results show the following main characteristics related to individual empowerment: identification with struggle, coping with poverty, a positive attitude towards learning throughout life, a perception of meaning in life, the search for intimacy, and the desire to help others. The most empowering contextual elements found are the family models regarding work and the con...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Clàudia Turró, Mariane Krause Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Development of a measure of sense of community for individuals with serious mental illness residing in community settingsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The psychological sense of community is one of the most commonly investigated constructs in community psychology. Sense of community may be particularly important for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) because they often face societal barriers to participation in community living, including stigma and discrimination. To date, no published studies have investigated the psychometric qualities of sense of community measures among individuals with SMI. The current study tested a series of confirmatory factor analyses using the Brief Sense of Community Index (Long & Perkins, 2003) in a sample of 416 persons with SMI ...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Greg Townley, Bret Kloos Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

Helping the soul: the relationship between connectivity and well-being within a church communityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although previous research attests to the importance of psychological sense of community (PSOC) to individuals' well-being, little research has examined this relationship for the four proposed dimensions of PSOC: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). Further, little research has explored multiple aspects of community connectivity in the one study. The current research investigated the relationship between participants' (N=127) religiosity, PSOC, social support, and identification within a church community context and their well-being. Results...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Patricia Obst, Naomi Tham Tags: Articles Source Type: journals

An examination of the role of perceptions in neighborhood researchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Accumulating research demonstrates that both archival indicators and residents' self-reports of neighborhood conditions are useful predictors of a variety of physical health, mental health, substance use, criminal, and educational outcomes. Although studies have shown these two types of measures are often related, no research has systematically examined their relationship. With a sample of Mexican Americans, this study examined this relationship and demographic factors that might account for variations of residents' perceptions of their neighborhoods. Results showed that country of birth, social class, family structure, an...
Source: Journal of Community Psychology - March 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Mark W. Roosa, Rebecca M. B. White, Katharine H. Zeiders, Jenn-Yun Tein Tags: Articles Source Type: journals