Family‐based Intervention for Legal System‐involved Girls: A Mixed Methods Evaluation

The increased proportion of juvenile court‐involved girls has spurred interest to implement and evaluate services to reduce girls’ system involvement. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a family‐based intervention by using a dominant sequential mixed methods evaluation approach. First, we examined quantitative data using a quasi‐experimental design to determine whether the family‐based intervention reduced recidivism among court‐involved girls. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to construct statistically equivalent groups to compare one‐year recidivism outcomes for girls who received the court‐run family‐based intervention (n = 181) to a group of girls on probation who did not receive the intervention (n = 803). Qualitative interviews (n = 39) were conducted to contextualize the quantitative findings and highlighted the circumstances that family‐focused interventions for court‐involved girls. Girls who received the program had slightly lower recidivism rates following the intervention. The qualitative findings contextualized the quasi‐experimental results by providing an explanation as to the girls’ family circumstances and insights into the mechanisms of the intervention. Results highlighted the importance of family‐focused interventions for juvenile justice‐involved girls. These findings have practical and policy implications for the use interventions—beyond the individual level—with adjudicated girls and offer suggestions for ways to improve their effectiveness using a community psychology lens. In addition, this paper includes a discussion of evaluating of juvenile court programming from a community psychology perspective including strengths, challenges, and considerations for future work in this area.     

Criminal Justice and Community Psychology: Our Values and Our Work—The Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of The American Journal of Community Psychology originated from the Society for Community Research and Action Criminal Justice interest group, with a goal of exploring the work of community psychologists intersecting with criminal justice research, practice, and policy and shaped by our shared values—equity, collaboration, creative maladjustment, social justice, and social science in the service of social justice. In this introduction, we discuss the socio‐historical context of the special issue, followed by an outline of the special issue organization, and brief summary of the included papers. Across 13 papers and an invited commentary, we see the ways in which community psychologists are: (1) delivering and evaluating services, programming, or other supports to address the needs of system‐involved people; and (2) working to improve the systems, structures, and interactions with units of criminal justice systems. Across these two sections, authors highlight the guiding role of our values to influence change within and outside of criminal‐legal systems.     

Dating and Sexual Violence Research in the Schools: Balancing Protection of Confidentiality with Supporting the Welfare of Survivors

Rigorous research and program evaluation are needed to understand the experience of dating and sexual violence among youth and the impact of prevention and intervention efforts. Our dilemma in doing this work occurred when youth disclosed dating and sexual violence on a research survey. What responsibility do researchers have to protect survivors’ confidentiality as a research participant versus taking steps to ensure the student has the opportunity to access help? In our evaluation of a pilot dating violence prevention program, our protocols employed widely used procedures for providing resources to participants upon their completion of the survey and de‐identifying survey data. Upon reviewing preliminary survey results, we became concerned that these established procedures were not sufficient to support research participants who were adolescent survivors of dating and sexual violence. We followed a structured ethical decision‐making process to examine legal and ethical considerations, consult with colleagues, consider impacts and alternative solutions, and ultimately find a solution. Through this process, we developed procedures that balance participant confidentiality and the desire to support the welfare of survivors, which other researchers may want to employ when conducting youth sexual and dating violence research in school and community settings.     

Fight,Flight, or Remain Silent? Juggling Multiple Accountabilities throughout the Formative Stage of a Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative

This paper describes the experiences of a research team as they navigated uncertain ethical and political terrain throughout the formative stage of a public housing redevelopment project. Specifically, we discuss the challenges related to balancing multiple accountabilities and the tensions among the various roles and responsibilities that emanated from different accountabilities. Due to contractual obligations to our funding source, established relations with community partners, and an ethical imperative to align with those holding the least power, we grappled with embodying multiple and often conflicting roles. Without oversight provided by our university institutional review board or a clear ethical framework for community psychology research and action, our team was left to negotiate the challenges that emerged through critical reflection and financial considerations. Throughout the case example presented in this paper, we highlight our difficulty in ethical decision‐making with respect to the principles of obligation, disclosure, consent, commitment, and professionalism. Community psychologists often straddle the realms of academia, community partnerships, and conscious engagement with little guidance in navigating often conflicting roles and value systems. We present our narrative to highlight the complexity of scholar‐activism in the context of community psychology and the necessity for developing ethical standards and guidelines tailored to meet the unique needs of community psychologists.     

Mid‐ and Long‐Term Effects of Family Constellation Seminars in a General Population Sample: 8‐ and 12‐Month Follow‐Up

In a previous randomized controlled trial (RCT), short‐term efficacy of family constellation seminars (FCSs) in a general population sample was demonstrated. In this article, we examined mid‐ and long‐term stability of these effects. Participants were 104 adults (M = 47 years; SD = 9; 84% female) who were part of the intervention group in the original RCT (3‐day FCS; 64 active participants and 40 observing participants). FCSs were carried out according to manuals. It was predicted that FCSs would improve psychological functioning (Outcome Questionnaire OQ‐45.2) at 8‐ and 12‐month follow‐up. Additionally, we assessed the effects of FCSs on psychological distress, motivational incongruence, individuals’ experience in their personal social systems, and overall goal attainment. Participants yielded significant improvement in psychological functioning (d = 0.41 at 8‐month follow‐up, p = .000; d = 0.40 at 12‐month follow‐up, p = .000). Results were confirmed for psychological distress, motivational incongruence, the participants’ experience in their personal social systems, and overall goal attainment. No adverse events were reported. This study provides first evidence for the mid‐ and long‐term efficacy of FCSs in a nonclinical population. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Personalizing Behavioral Interventions Through Single‐Patient (N‐of‐1) Trials

Behavioral interventions are typically studied with the use of a conventional between‐subject randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. In this design, the effect of an intervention on one group of patients is compared with the effect of a control condition on another group of patients, such that a between‐subject change is tested. A between‐subject design has an underlying assumption that there is a homogenous treatment effect for a behavioral intervention, drug, or psychotherapy and that the way the intervention operates in the study will tend to operate in the same way in many other patients. We review some of the philosophical and practical problems with the use of this design when a clinician is attempting to decide on a course of behavioral treatment aimed at within‐subject change in patients who are likely to have heterogeneous or unique responses to behavioral treatment. We also review the biases inherent in our current clinical practice model, which does not use any empirical data collection or design for testing if a treatment is useful, and also in the conventional between‐subject personalized medicine RCT designs. We propose increased use of single‐patient (also known as N‐of‐1) trials that employ within‐subject designs, in cases where treatment response is heterogeneous – as is the case for most psychological and behavioral treatments. Limitations of such designs include that they can only be used when the treatment is potentially reversible, the patient can act as their own control, and the outcome can be measured repeatedly. Increased use of within‐subject trials may address in many more instances the more clinically relevant question of how a specific patient will respond to a specific treatment and could introduce a more harmonious scientific approach into the way we treat our patients. We have incorporated a case presentation that illustrates the complexities of applying evidence drawn from these different designs to selecting and evaluating treatments for the behavioral issues commonly faced by clinicians and patients.     

Non-Reductionist Naturalism: Nussbaum between Aristotle and Hume

Martha Nussbaum proposes a universal list of human capabilities as the basis for fundamental political principles. She claims that the list, in an Aristotelian spirit, might be justified by an ongoing inquiry into valuable human functionings for the good life. Here I argue that the attractiveness of Nussbaum’s theory crucially depends on the philosophical possibility of a non-reductionist understanding of naturalism and on resolving the tensions between ethical and political aspects of the role of capabilities. Through a comparison of Nussbaum’s approach with those of Aristotle and (less familiarly) Hume, I try to show that in these alternative versions we find valuable resources for the kind of non-reductionist model which might, in line with Nussbaum’s own objectives, provide the basis for a capabilities-based critique of dominant modes of normative theorizing and their influence in public discourse. This article was presented at the UK Association for Legal and Social Philosophy Conference on Equality, 5–7 July 2004, University of Wales, Newport. I am grateful to Gideon Calder, Herman De Dijn, Carlos Steel, Jochim Lourduswamy, Toon Vandevelde and two anonymous referees for this journal for their comments and suggestions.     

Ethical Issues in HIV/STD Prevention Research With High Risk Youth: Providing Help,Preserving Validity

Many preventive intervention studies with adolescents address high-risk behaviors such as drug and alcohol use, and unprotected sex. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the gold standard methodology used to test the effectiveness of these behavioral interventions. Interventions outside the rigidly described protocol are prohibited. However, there are ethical challenges to implementing inflexible intervention protocols, especially when the target population is young, experiences many stressful events, and lives in a resource-poor environment. Teens who are at high risk for substance use or sexual risk behaviors tend to be at risk for other problems such as exposure to violence, sexual and physical abuse, depression, and homelessness. How should investigators deal with the psychological and social needs of teenagers in prevention programs in an ethically appropriate way and at the same time preserve the validity of RCT results? We have identified program characteristics, participant characteristics, interaction with parents, and problems with adolescents not in the study as sources of ethical dilemmas in RCT with at-risk adolescents. As a result of our experience, we recommend that every behavioral intervention study develop an ethics protocol, which should include rules for providing help to participants, has contact information for experts to provide guidance, and an emergency procedure for dealing with life threatening situations. In addition, studies should have a resource manual, train research staff in these ethical issues, and work with a data safety and monitoring board or ethics committee.     

Ethical social justice: Do the ends justify the means?

This article offers an ethical decision‐making model, informed by community psychology values, as a means for guiding psychologists when engaging in social justice‐oriented work. The applicability of this model is demonstrated through a case analysis elucidating how America's psychologists individually and collectively arrived at the decision to endorse torture—ostensibly as a means for preventing terrorism. Critics have wondered how the American Psychological Association succumbed to these involvements, and how to prevent such ethical lapses in the future. Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association's ethical codes fail to provide explicit guidance for psychologists' involvement in social justice work that impacts communities and systems. To address this gap, we present a values‐driven, ethical decision‐making framework that may be used to guide psychologists' future practices. This framework infuses fundamental community psychology values (i.e., caring and compassion; health; self‐determination and participation, human diversity, social justice; and critical reflexivity) into a 9‐step model.     

Improving outgroup attitudes in schools: First steps toward a teacher‐led vicarious contact intervention

Despite the urgent need for promoting positive intergroup relations in schools, research on intergroup relations is not systematically translated into prejudice‐reduction interventions. Although prejudice‐reduction interventions in schools based on indirect contact have been conducted for decades, they have all been carried out by researchers themselves. In a field experiment in Finland in autumn 2015, we tested for the first time a vicarious contact prejudice‐reduction intervention for its effectiveness among adolescents (N = 639) when implemented independently by school teachers instead of researchers. In addition, we tested the extent to which the intervention's effect depends on initial outgroup attitudes, previous direct outgroup contact experiences, and gender, hypothesizing that the intervention improves outgroup attitudes particularly among adolescents with more negative prior attitudes and less positive prior direct contact, and more among girls than among boys. We found an unanticipated overall deterioration in the outgroup attitudes during intervention in both the experimental and control groups. However, attitudes seemed to deteriorate somewhat less in the experimental than in the control group, and the intervention had a significant positive effect on outgroup attitudes in one experimental subgroup that needed it most: girls who had negative rather than positive outgroup attitudes at the outset. We discuss our results in light of previous research and contextual particularities.     

THE MORAL REQUIREMENT IN THEISTIC AND SECULAR ETHICS

One of the central tasks of meta‐ethical inquiry is to accommodate the common‐sense assumptions deeply embedded in our moral discourse. A comparison of the potential of secular and theistic ethics shows that, in the end, theists have a greater facility in achieving this accommodation task; it is easier to appreciate the action‐guiding authority and binding nature of morality in a theistic rather than in a secular context. Theistic ethics has a further advantage in being able to accommodate not only this essential conceptual feature of morality, but also the existence of moral requirements and their source of normativity.     

Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology Subtest Scores of Professional and Traditional Clinical Psychology Program Graduates

Professional school clinical psychology graduates not only exhibit inferior performance on the research subtest of the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP; D. I. Templer & M. E. Tomeo, 1998), but they also perform less well on the four more professionally oriented subtests: diagnosis, intervention, professional/ethical/legal issues, and application to social systems. Graduates of free-standing professional schools exhibited performances inferior to those of graduates of non-free-standing professional schools on the diagnosis, intervention, and professional/ethical/legal subtests.     

Examination for professional practice in psychology subtest scores of professional and traditional clinical psychology program graduates

Professional school clinical psychology graduates not only exhibit inferior performance on the research subtest of the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP; D. I. Templer & M. E. Tomeo, 1998), but they also perform less well on the four more professionally oriented subtests: diagnosis, intervention, professional/ethical/legal issues, and application to social systems. Graduates of free-standing professional schools exhibited performances inferior to those of graduates of non-free-standing professional schools on the diagnosis, intervention, and professional/ethical/legal subtests.     

Wittgenstein,Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically‐ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically‐ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing.     

Virtue Ethics,Applied Ethics and Rationality twenty-three years after After Virtue

Abstract

In evaluating the merits and shortcomings of virtue ethics I focus on some central differences between virtue ethics and rival theories such as deontology and utilitarianism. Virtue ethics does not prescribe strict rules of conduct. Instead, the virtue ethical approach can be understood as an invitation to search for standards, as opposed to strict rules, that ought to guide the conduct of our individual lives. This requires a particular method. The importance of this approach in present times will become clear when we investigate the relation between virtue ethics and postmodernity. In our postmodem age moral concepts are no longer perceived as deriving their meaning from larger frameworks. Instead, their meanings are perceived as being derived from the contingencies that define our particular existences. Thus ongoing grassroots moral engagement is required, and virtue ethics is the appropriate moral framework for doing this. This results in a broadening of rationality insofar as the full richness of our situated lives are factored into our accounts of rationality. At the same time virtue ethics prevents relativism, mainly because it does justice to the social embeddedness of human activities. In order to illustrate the virtue ethical approach I will discuss two key concepts in our moral vocabulary: responsibility and integrity. We will see how these basic concepts can be properly understood only if one takes into consideration the contingencies, inherent paradoxes and tensions in human life.     

Ontology and ethics at the intersection of phenomenology and environmental philosophy

The idea inspiring the eco‐phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally‐destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco‐phenomenology's critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco‐phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto‐ethical facts; Heideggerians and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco‐centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more ‘humanistic’ perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco‐centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti‐humanistic implications.     

A Synthetic Approach to Bioethical Inquiry

This paper attempts to sort out some of the current tensions and ambiguities inherent in the field of bioethics as it continues to mature. In particular it focuses on the question of the methodological relevance of theory or ethical principles to the domain of clinical ethics. I offer an approach to reasoning about moral conflict that combines the insights of contemporary moral theorists, the philosophy of American pragmatism, and the skills of rhetorical deliberation. This synthetic approach locates a proper role for moral theory in the practice of clinical ethics, thus linking abstract philosophical ideas about morality, humanity, suffering, and health to specific deeds, actions, and decisions in the concrete lives of particular individuals. The aim of this synthetic approach of bioethical inquiry is a rapprochement between theoretical knowledge in moral philosophy and the contextualized, relational, and practical understanding of what morality demands of us in our daily lives. I argue for a conception of bioethical inquiry that takes morality to be a study of certain practical, socially embedded concerns about matters of right and wrong, good and evil, as well as a study of the moral theories by which these actual concerns can be explored and critically evaluated.     

Beyond the Tools of the Trade: Heidegger and the Intelligibility of Everyday Things

In everyday life, we constantly encounter and deal with useful things without pausing to inquire about the sources of their intelligibility. In Div. I of Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes just such an inquiry. According to a common reading of Heidegger's analysis, the intelligibility of our everyday encounters and dealings with useful things is ultimately constituted by practical self‐understandings (such as being a gardener, shoemaker, teacher, mother, musician, or philosopher). In this paper, I argue that while such practical self‐understandings may be sufficient to constitute the intelligibility of the tools and equipment specific to many practices, these “tools of the trade” are only a small portion of the things we encounter, use, and deal with on a daily basis. Practical self‐understandings cannot similarly account for the intelligibility of the more mundane things—like toothbrushes and sidewalks—used in everyday life. I consider whether an anonymous self‐understanding as “one,” “anyone,” or “no one in particular” —das Man—might play this intelligibility‐constituting role. In examining this possibility, another type of self‐understanding comes to light: cultural identities. I show that the cultural identities into which we are “thrown,” rather than practical identities or das Man, constitute the intelligibility of the abundance of mundane things that fill our everyday lives. Finally, I spell out how this finding bears on our understanding of Heidegger's notion of authenticity.