Using empowerment theory in collaborative partnerships for community health and development

Models of community empowerment help us understand the process of gaining influence over conditions that matter to people who share neighborhoods, workplaces, experiences, or concerns. Such frameworks can help improve collaborative partnerships for community health and development. First, we outline an interactive model of community empowerment that describes reciprocal influences between personal or group factors and environmental factors in an empowerment process. Second, we describe an iterative framework for the process of empowerment in community partnerships that includes collaborative planning, community action, community change, capacity building, and outcomes, and adaptation, renewal, and institutionalization. Third, we outline activities that are used by community leadership and support organizations to facilitate the process of community empowerment. Fourth, we present case stories of collaborative partnerships for prevention of substance abuse among adolescents to illustrate selected enabling activities. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities of facilitating empowerment with collaborative partnerships for community health and development. This work was supported by Kansas Health Foundation Grants 9206032B and 9206032A to support and evaluate community partnerships to prevent adolescent substance abuse. Thanks to Tom Wolff for sharing his wisdom about community coalitions so generously, and to Bill Berkowitz and anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this manuscrpt. We also thank our colleagues from the Kansas Health Foundation, Mary K. Campuzano, Steve Coen, and Marni Vliet, and those from collaborating communities, who continue to teach us about ways to enhance community capacities to address local concerns.     

The cost of forgiveness: Observers prefer victims who leave unfaithful romantic partners

Ninety‐six male fraternity members (Study 1), 112 female voters (Study 2), and 219 undergraduates (Study 3) read scenarios in which a group representative forgave, retaliated, or left a romantic partner after the partner's sexual infidelity was publically revealed. Observers rated a victim who forgave his or her partner to be as mature as a victim who ended the relationship, but also as weaker and less competent. They rated a victim who forgave to be more mature but almost as weak and incompetent as a victim who retaliated. Symbolic concerns that the victim's behavior violated shared values (all three studies) or damaged the group's power/status (Study 3) mediated the relationship between victim behavior and victim ratings. These data demonstrate how the symbolic concerns that shape observers' judgments of an offender can extend to observers' judgments of the victim. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Age Moderates the Mediational Role of Empathy in the Association Between Gender and Forgiveness

Researchers have suggested that empathy may serve to explain, at least in part, the relationship between gender and forgiveness. Some findings in the literature have supported this claim, while other studies have not. Accounting for the variable of age might help to explain these inconsistencies, as age has been found to influence the expression of empathy across gender. As such, in the present study we examined whether age might exert a conditional indirect effect on the relationship between gender and forgiveness as mediated by empathy. Participants were recruited from the community (N?=?62) and on a college campus (N?=?94). Within the community sample the average age was 74.8, while on the college campus the average age was 20.7. Participants were given a survey packet that included the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Empathy Quotient Scale, among other instruments. A moderated-mediational analysis showed that while gender was related to empathy and empathy was associated with forgiveness, empathy served as a significant mediator only for those younger than 62 years of age. This finding suggests that empathy serves as an important mediator in the relationship between gender and forgiveness for adults aged 61 and younger, because younger women are more likely to respond empathetically to a transgressor as compared to younger men. Older women also tend to be more forgiving than older men, but in the present study empathy was not as important of a factor in explaining this relationship for individuals 62 years and older. These findings help to address the inconsistencies in the literature with regard to the relationships among gender, age, empathy, and forgiveness.     

Training Pediatric Psychologists for Perinatal Behavioral Health Services in a Pediatric Hospital

Although pediatric hospitals specialize in providing care to children and adolescents, at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), our team has been providing behavioral health services for two unique parent populations—parents with a child in the Newborn Infant Intensive Care Unit and pregnant women carrying fetuses with specific birth defects and receiving prenatal care in the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment. A new training program was developed to expand the scope of pediatric psychologists’ practice to include perinatal behavioral health services, specifically for these two unique parent populations served at CHOP. The program includes direct service provision for adult mental health concerns, as well as education and support to help families cope with the existing medical conditions. This article describes the training program and its implementation as a model of training for other pediatric hospitals. The roles of psychologists embedded in these units and hospital privileges are discussed.     

Applying a Family-Ecosystemic Model to Reunite a Family Separated Due to Child Abuse: A Case Study

Family reunification following the removal of a child due to child abuse is a challenging process. In this case study the authors demonstrate the success of a family-ecosystemic intervention for achieving the reintegration of an adolescent into her family following a court-imposed separation. The SET (Structural Ecosytems Therapy) model was used to: (1) repair family bonds, (2) build collaborations among the agencies involved in overseeing the child's welfare, and (3) build an alliance between the mother and agency personnel. This case study suggests that facilitating such collaborations can be helpful in the evaluation and follow-through of high risk cases.     

Naming Speed Performance and Stimulant Effects Indicate Effortful, Semantic Processing Deficits in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study investigated rapid automatized naming and effects of stimulant medication in school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with and without concurrent reading disorder (RD). Two ADHD groups (67 ADHD only; 21 ADHD + RD) and a control group of 27 healthy age-matched peers were compared on four variables: color naming speed, letter naming speed, phonologic decoding, and arithmetic computation. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) was conducted to predict group membership. The four variables loaded onto two discriminant functions with good specificity: phonologic decoding, letter naming speed, and arithmetic defined the first function; color naming speed defined the second function. Both ADHD groups were significantly slower in color naming than controls, but did not differ from one another. DFA correctly classified 96% of the control group, 91% of ADHD + RD, and 82% of ADHD only. A subset of children in the ADHD groups participated subsequently in an acute, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial with three single doses (10, 25, 20 mg) of methylphenidate. Methylphenidate selectively improved color-naming speed but had no effect on the speed of naming letters or digits. These findings challenge the tenet that naming speed deficits are specific to RD and implicate naming speed deficits associated with effortful semantic processing in ADHD, which are improved but not normalized by stimulant medication.     

The role of understanding in solving word problems

Word problems are notoriously difficult to solve. We suggest that much of the difficulty children experience with word problems can be attributed to difficulty in comprehending abstract or ambiguous language. We tested this hypothesis by (1) requiring children to recall problems either before or after solving them, (2) requiring them to generate final questions to incomplete word problems, and (3) modeling performance patterns using a computer simulation. Solution performance was found to be systematically related to recall and question generation performance. Correct solutions were associated with accurate recall of the problem structure and with appropriate question generation. Solution “errors” were found to be correct solutions to miscomprehended problems. Word problems that contained abstract or ambiguous language tended to be miscomprehended more often than those using simpler language, and there was a great deal of systematicity in the way these problems were miscomprehended. Solution error patterns were successfully simulated by manipulating a computer model's language comprehension strategies, as opposed to its knowledge of logical set relations.     

Dogfighting: Symbolic Expression and Validation of Masculinity

This study examines the issue of masculinity indogfighting. Dogfighting is an illegal gaming sportcentered in the Southern United States. The data for thisstudy were obtained via ethnographic fieldwork over a period of two years. Interviews wereconducted with 31 dogmen, approximately 90% of whom werewhite males. In addition the authors attended 14dogfights and numerous pre-fight meetings. We argue that specific elements of this sport representsymbolic attempts at attaining and maintaining honor andstatus, which, in the (predominantly white, male,working-class) dogfighting subculture, are equated with masculine identity. We further argue thatpursuit of symbolic masculinity through dogfighting ismore important to working-class men, who possess feweralternative avenues for achieving status than do middle-class or professional men. Theimplications of this research for the larger culture ofmasculinity in the United States are alsoexplored.     

Memory-basedsame-different conceptualization by pigeons

We first trained pigeons to peck one button (same) after the successive presentation of 16 identical pictures and to peck a second button (different) after the successive presentation of 16 nonidentical pictures. Later, we tested the birds with other lists ofsame anddifferent items composed of completely novel pictures. Accuracy to the testing lists reliably exceeded chance levels, thus demonstratingsame-different conceptualization by pigeons under conditions that, for the first time, (1) eliminated purely perceptual mechanisms of discrimination learning and transfer and (2) required memory-based processing of the experimental stimuli.