Ethics in Community-University-Artist Partnered Research: Tensions,Contradictions and Gaps Identified in an ‘Arts for Social Change’ Project

Academics from diverse disciplines are recognizing not only the procedural ethical issues involved in research, but also the complexity of everyday “micro” ethical issues that arise. While ethical guidelines are being developed for research in aboriginal populations and low-and-middle-income countries, multi-partnered research initiatives examining arts-based interventions to promote social change pose a unique set of ethical dilemmas not yet fully explored. Our research team, comprising health, education, and social scientists, critical theorists, artists and community-activists launched a five-year research partnership on arts-for-social change. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada and based in six universities, including over 40 community-based collaborators, and informed by five main field projects (circus with street youth, theatre by people with disabilities, dance for people with Parkinson’s disease, participatory theatre with refugees and artsinfused dialogue), we set out to synthesize existing knowledge and lessons we learned. We summarized these learnings into 12 key points for reflection, grouped into three categories: community-university partnership concerns (n?=?3), dilemmas related to the arts (n?=?5), and team issues (n?=?4). In addition to addressing previous concerns outlined in the literature (e.g., related to consent, anonymity, dangerous emotional terrain, etc.), we identified power dynamics (visible and hidden) hindering meaningful participation of community partners and university-based teams that need to be addressed within a reflective critical framework of ethical practice. We present how our team has been addressing these issues, as examples of how such concerns could be approached in community-university partnerships in arts for social change.     

Perceived Injustice Mediates the Relationship Between Perceived Childhood Neglect and Current Function in Patients with Chronic Pain: A Preliminary Pilot Study

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Cumulative evidence supports the association between perceived childhood neglect and adulthood psychological and physical health. To date,...     

A Feasibility Study of Behavioral Activation for Major Depressive Disorder in a Community Mental Health Setting

Behavioral activation (BA) is a well-supported treatment approach, but little research has been conducted on the effectiveness of this treatment within publicly funded community mental health settings. We examined the feasibility of conducting a randomized trial examining the effectiveness of nine sessions of BA as a treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) in a community mental health clinic (CMHC) setting. Following adaptation of a BA manual and training of BA therapists, 80 patients seeking treatment at a CMHC were randomized, with a 3:1 randomization rate of BA to nine sessions of treatment as usual (TAU). Feasibility assessments indicated that only one eligible patient refused randomization and, of patients who attended at least one session, the median number of sessions was six for the BA group and eight for the TAU group. Of three postbaseline monthly assessments, 71.3% (171/240) were successfully obtained. On average, patients in the BA condition completed homework assignments 83.9% of the time. Treatment fidelity ratings indicated that substantially more BA techniques were delivered in the BA group compared to the TAU group (d = 2.11). Measures of BA mechanisms improved significantly over time and these changes were significantly associated with change in depressive symptoms. These results indicate that it is feasible to conduct a randomized study of BA for MDD in a CMHC setting. In addition, the study reconfirmed the potential importance of theory-relevant BA mechanism variables. Following these findings, further investigation into the effectiveness of BA in this setting is needed.     

Overlap and Uniqueness: Linguistic Componential Traits Contributing to Expressive Skills in English as a Foreign Language

This study identified robust predictors of expressive skills in academic English as a foreign language. The participants were 92 Korean-speaking learners of English. The field test of the Pearson Test of English Academic was used as a secondary data analysis. Four communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and six enabling linguistic traits (written discourse, oral fluency, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary) were analyzed using writing and speaking skills as dependent variables. The greatest overlapping variance was found in the relationship between reading and writing. When listening and speaking skills were controlled, the unique variance accounted by reading in the prediction of writing became marginal. The results of this study demonstrated that L2 oral language skills became increasingly important to L2 writing outcomes as language proficiency improved over time.     

Understanding autism: how family therapists can support parents of children with autism spectrum disorders

The number of children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. Parents of children with autism experience a variety of chronic and acute stressors that can erode marital satisfaction and family functioning. Family therapists are well-suited to help parents stay connected to each other as they create a "new normal." However, family therapists need updated information about autism, and they need to understand how family therapy can help parents of children with autism. Because having a child with autism affects multiple domains of family life, this paper explores how family therapists can utilize an integrative approach with parents, enabling them to flexibly work with the domains of action, meaning, and emotion.     

The Politics of Judicial Public Reason: Secular Interests and Religious Rights

This paper seeks a better understanding of the role of public reason in alimenting or defusing religious conflicts by looking at how courts apply it in deciding cases arising out of them. Recent scholarship and judicial decisions suggest, paradoxically, that courts can be biased towards either the secular or the religious. This risks alienating both religious majorities and religious and secular minorities. Judicial public reason is uniquely equipped to protect minorities, and its costs to religious majorities may be mitigated by accepting religious morality and identity claims in the political and legislative realm. Despite the political fragilities of judicial public reason, it is not intrinsically hostile to religious claims. It ought in fact to be fully equipped to recognize the equality and religious freedom rights that religious groups and individuals might assert in pursuing exemptions from general secular laws. Judicial public reason does have the potential to defuse religious conflicts, however much it falls short in practice.     

Culture and social support provision: who gives what and why

The present research examined cultural differences in the type and frequency of support provided as well as the motivations underlying these behaviors. Study 1, an open-ended survey, asked participants about their social interactions in the past 24 hours and found that European Americans reported providing emotion-focused support more frequently than problem-focused support, whereas Japanese exhibited the opposite pattern. Study 2, a closed-ended questionnaire study, found that, in response to the close other's big stressor, European Americans provided more emotion-focused support whereas Japanese provided equivalent amounts of emotion-focused and problem-focused support. In addition, Study 2 examined motivational explanations for these differences. Social support provision was motivated by the goal of closeness and increasing recipient self-esteem among European Americans, but only associated with the motive for closeness among Japanese. These studies illustrate the importance of considering cultural context and its role in determining the meaning and function of various support behaviors.     

A Componential Approach to Training Reading Skills: Part 2. Decoding and Use of Context

This is the second of two articles that describe the development and evaluation of three component-specific instructional systems for improving critical reading skills. The skill components that were the focus of training have been shown in prior research to represent particular sources of processing difficulty for young adult, poor readers and, based on a model of component interaction, were predicted to have a potentially strong impact on the performance of other component processes. Part 1 presented the evaluation of SPEED, a system designed to develop automaticity in the ability to perceptually encode multiletter units that appear in words. Part 2 describes the evaluation of the RACER and SKI JUMP systems, which focus respectively on developing automaticity in phonological decoding of orthographic information in words and the use of context frames in retrieving and integrating word meanings. In both the RACER and SKI JUMP training studies, all subjects achieved highly accurate and efficient levels of performance in the skill that was the focus of training. Furthermore, SKI JUMP training had an impact on word analysis components and on a measure of inferential comprehension. An analysis of the patterns of transfer of skills acquired in training is presented, and conditions for optimizing skill integration are discussed.