Establishing and Evaluating the Key Functions of an Interactive Systems Framework Using an Assets-Getting to Outcomes Intervention

Community practitioners can face difficulty in achieving outcomes demonstrated by prevention science. Building a community practitioner's prevention capacity—the knowledge and skills needed to conduct critical prevention practices—could improve the quality of prevention and its outcomes. The purpose of this article is to: (1) describe how an intervention called Assets‐Getting To Outcomes (AGTO) was used to establish the key functions of the ISF and present early lessons learned from that intervention's first 6 months and (2) examine whether there is an empirical relationship between practitioner capacity at the individual level and the performance of prevention at the program level—a relationship predicted by the ISF but untested. The article describes an operationalization of the ISF in the context of a five‐year randomized controlled efficacy trial that combines two complementary models designed to build capacity: Getting To Outcomes (GTO) and Developmental Assets. The trial compares programs and individual practitioners from six community‐based coalitions using AGTO with programs and practitioners from six similar coalitions that are not. In this article, we primarily focus on what the ISF calls innovation specific capacity and discuss how the combined AGTO innovation structures and uses feedback about its capacity‐building activities, which can serve as a model for implementing the ISF. Focus group discussions used to gather lessons learned from the first 6 months of the AGTO intervention suggest that while the ISF may have been conceptualized as three distinct systems, in practice they are less distinct. Findings from the baseline wave of data collection of individual capacity and program performance suggest that practitioner capacity predicts, in part, performance of prevention programs. Empirically linking practitioner capacity and performance of prevention provides empirical support for both the ISF and AGTO. Special Issue: Advances in Bridging Research and Practice Using the Interactive System Framework for Dissemination and Implementation; Guest Editors: Abraham Wandersman, Paul Flaspohler, Catherine A. Lesesne, Richard Puddy; Action Editor: Emilie Phillips Smith     

Relational‐Cultural Theory and Supervision: Evaluating Developmental Relational Counseling

This article overviews relational‐cultural theory and developmental relational counseling (DRC) and reports the results of a randomized study evaluating supervisory relational health as defined by DRC theoretical constructs. As measured by an adaptation of the Relational Health Index (Liang et al., 2002 ), counseling students enrolled in clinical courses identified clear preferences for supervisory relationships that promoted accurate relational awareness, compassion, clarity, feedback receptivity, and responsible use of power.     

Gender Conceptualizations in Female High School Seniors: Relationships with Global Self-Worth and Multiple Measures of Body Image

This study was conducted to determine if gender-role conceptualizations in adolescent girls were related to their global self-worth and several dimensions of their body image. Self-report surveys were administered to 335 predominantly Caucasian Grade 12 girls from religiously-based high schools in the midwestern part of the United States. It was hypothesized that adolescent females?? gender-typing of themselves as well as their gender-related attitudes towards others would be significantly, and possibly divergently, related to their perceptions of themselves and their physical bodies. Obtained data were analyzed using multivariate canonical correlation procedures. The results of these analyses revealed support for the predicted overall relationship between gender conceptualizations and self-perceptions, but also indicated some differences in the way in which the two dimensions of gender-role conceptualizations (personal and attitudes towards others) were associated with adolescents?? perceptions of themselves. Specifically, girls exhibiting more egalitarian gender-related attitudes towards others scored higher on global self-worth and lower in body appearance orientation. In addition, higher self-endorsement on the masculine subscales was linked with higher global self-worth, lower social physique anxiety, and higher use of competence to evaluate the physical body. In contrast, high self-endorsement on the feminine subscales exhibited mixed links to the set of self-perceptual variables.