Eyes on the street: Photovoice,liberation psychotherapy,and the emotional landscapes of urban children

Eyes on the Street is a therapeutic photovoice program which empowered 25 predominantly African American children (ages 7–12) to use digital photography to express and process emotions about their neighborhood, the Hilltop South community of Pittsburgh. Many of the Hilltop South neighborhoods suffer from the effects of systemic sociopolitical disenfranchisement and trauma. This program implemented photovoice as a trauma-healing intervention to empower youth in the Hilltop South to recognize, utilize, and artistically express their emotional responses to the public places of their neighborhood. The program's objectives were to create activities and spaces where children can practice emotional agility by articulating their feelings as images, and to introduce children to a self-advocacy tool with which to assert the needs of their community. This paper lays out the principles of liberation psychotherapy, discusses how they have guided the program development for Eyes on the Street, and showcases the details of the trauma-healing photovoice curriculum.     

Rethinking Traumatic Brain Injury from Intimate Partner Violence: A Theoretical Model of the Cycle of Transmission

ABSTRACT

Despite growing evidence of the repeated nature of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), there is no theoretical model depicting TBIs as a cyclical process throughout a lifetime. Situational analysis methodology was used on interviews with 10 women who self-reported passing out from being hit in the head during an episode of IPV to create a theoretical model depicting the cycle of transmission of TBI. We define the cycle of transmission of TBI as the way that women experience multiple TBIs over the course of their lifetime and how TBI can be perpetuated in a family or community. The cycle begins in childhood or adolescence, when women receive a TBI from abuse, sports, or motor vehicle accident. They enter into abusive relationships with men who are also described as living with a TBI and the women receive other TBIs during this relationship. With repeating head trauma, women described increasing TBI symptoms: problems with memory, cognition, executive functioning, depression, and concentration. If they do seek help, they must choose between healthcare and protective shelter. With either choice, the element of instability could be introduced and the cycle of transmission continues. This theoretical model shows that it is necessary to move beyond individual behaviors to think about how TBIs are transmitted through communities and how untreated symptoms can impact help-seeking behavior and perpetuate other risk factors for receiving a TBI.     

“Method and meaning”: Storytelling as decolonial praxis in the psychology of racialized peoples

In psychology, there is a growing recognition of how racialized groups are often dehumanized and pathologized, and how racist and colonial legacies still inform our research and practices today. In order to dismantle racism within academic institutions we must decolonize and indigenize psychological science. One promising strategy is the use of storytelling methodology wherein participants from racialized groups share their lived experiences. However, the process of how storytelling contributes to decolonization is rarely explained, and decolonization is rarely defined. The present paper systematically reviewed studies that examined racialized individuals’ lived experience using storytelling methodology in order to synthesize conceptualizations of decolonization and of how storytelling contributes to decolonizing psychological research. Findings suggest storytelling meaningfully contributes to decolonial praxis in psychology. Researchers must work consciously and collaboratively, center research around liberating racialized communities, and explicitly define how their study decolonizes in order to be accountable to their community of study and to the colonial history of the lands on which they're situated.     

Factorial validity of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) across occupational groups in Norway

Nerstad, C.G.L., Richardsen, A.M. & Martinussen, M. (2009). Factorial validity of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) across occupational groups in Norway. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The present study investigated the factorial validity of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) among 1266 participants from ten different occupational groups. Confirmatory factor analyses of the total sample, as well as multi‐group analyses and analyses of each of the ten occupational groups separately, indicated that a three‐dimensional model of both the UWES‐17 and the short version, UWES‐9, provided a better fit to the data than a one‐ and two‐dimensional model. The results of multi‐group analyses and analyses of each of the groups separately, indicated that with a few exceptions, the three‐factor model of work engagement provided the best fit. Results indicated factorial invariance and the internal consistencies were acceptable. The fit of the UWES‐9 was slightly better than the UWES‐17. It is concluded that the Norwegian short version may be recommended over the UWES‐17.     

Value congruence and teachers’ work engagement: The mediating role of autonomous and controlled motivation

This study aimed to examine the importance of value congruence in work engagement and to extend the previous literature by investigating the potential mediating effects of autonomous and controlled motivation in this relationship. The Perceived Value Congruence, Autonomous and Controlled Motivation and Work Engagement scales were administered to 767 teachers in Mainland China. Correlation analysis revealed that value congruence, autonomous and controlled motivation and work engagement were significantly correlated with each other. Furthermore, structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis showed that value congruence exerted its indirect effect on teacher’s work engagement through the mediating effect of autonomous and controlled motivation. These findings provide a new perspective to explain the complex association between value congruence and work engagement. The possible explanations and the research limitations are discussed.     

Solidarity and Community Engagement in Global Health Research

Abstract

Community engagement (CE) is gaining prominence in global health research. A number of ethical goals–spanning the instrumental, intrinsic, and transformative–have been ascribed to CE in global health research. This paper draws attention to an additional transformative value that CE is not typically linked to but that seems very relevant: solidarity. Both are concerned with building relationships and connecting parties that are distant from one another. This paper first argues that furthering solidarity should be recognized as another ethical goal for CE in global health research. It contends that, over time, CE can build the bases of solidaristic relationships—moral imagination, recognition, understanding, empathy—between researchers and community members. Applying concepts from existing accounts of solidarity, the paper develops preliminary ideas about who should be engaged and how to advance solidarity. The proposed approach is compared to current CE practice in global health research. Finally, the paper briefly considers how solidaristic CE could affect how global health research is performed.     

Do you feel happy when other members look happy? Moderating effect of community-level social capital on interconnection of happiness

One's happiness is expected to be affected by the happiness of surrounding others. This socio-psychological nature of happiness, however, has not been fully examined in the literature of social psychology. The current study examined if this “psychological interconnection of happiness” occurs when (i) individuals have strong personal social capital and/or (ii) individuals belong to a community where other members have strong social capital. We analysed a large social survey dataset sampled from 408 communities in Japan (N = 7295). The psychological interconnection of happiness was measured by calculating the correlation between individual happiness and perceived community happiness. The multilevel analyses revealed that the psychological interconnection of happiness was moderated by community-level social capital above and beyond individual-level social capital, while individual-level social capital did not have a significant moderation effect.