Promoting Healing and Restoring Trust: Policy Recommendations for Improving Behavioral Health Care for American Indian/Alaska Native Adolescents

American Indian/Alaska Native youth represent the strength and continued survival of many Nations and Tribes. However, they currently experience numerous health disparities and challenges, including the highest rate of suicide among 15–24 year-olds in the United States. Our comprehensive review of the literature on the mental health of AI/AN youth highlighted seven focal causes of behavioral health disparities: (1) high levels of violence and trauma exposure and traumatic loss, (2) past and current oppression, racism, and discrimination, (3) underfunded systems of care, (4) disregard for effective indigenous practices in service provision, policy, and funding, (5) overreliance on evidence-based practices, (6) lack of cultural competence among systems of care and providers, and (7) barriers to care. Seven policy recommendations that recognize the importance of moving beyond exclusive reliance on western models of care and that seek to foster transformation of individuals, families, communities, behavioral health service systems of care, and social structures are presented, supported, and discussed.     

The RIASEC profile of foreign language teachers

Vocational choice appears to crystallize during adolescence and one’s career aspirations begin to take shape later. Over 40 years ago Holland studied incoming freshman to match vocational aspirations to vocational preference profiles. Individuals seeking to become foreign language teachers were assigned a Social, Artistic, Enterprising vocational code. However, longitudinal studies were not conducted to verify if these people ever entered the teaching profession. The present study sought to determine a Holland code for inservice foreign language educators. Data analysis confirms a stable Holland profile and his earlier findings as well as highlighting interesting differences among world language educators. This study holds implications for school counselors and recruiters of prospective language teachers during a time of critical shortage.     

How Do Organizations and Social Policies ‘Acculturate’ to Immigrants? Accommodating Skilled Immigrants in Canada

While the idea of acculturation (Berry 1997) was originally proposed as the mutual change of both parties (e.g., immigrants and the host society), the change processes of host societies are neglected in research. A grounded theory study explored the efforts of human service organizations to 'acculturate' to an increasingly diverse immigrant population, through interviews conducted with service providers serving Mainland Chinese immigrants. Acculturation efforts of human service organizations (mezzo-level acculturation) were often needs-driven and affected by the political will and resultant funding programs (macro-level forces). Even with limitations, human service organizations commonly focused on hiring Mainland Chinese immigrants to reflect the changing demographics of their clientele and creating new programs to meet the language and cultural backgrounds of the clients. To contextualize these organizational efforts, an analysis of how policy changes (macro-level acculturation) interact with organizational practice is presented. Finally, the meaning of acculturation for the host society is discussed.     

Emerging Policy Problems Related to Ubiquitous Computing: Negotiating Stakeholders’ Visions of the Future

This paper provides an overview of the human-centered vision of Ubiquitous Computing and draws on research examining slowly emerging problems over a long-term time frame in the emerging Ubiquitous Computing environment. A six-phase process employing scenario planning, electronic focus groups, and problem assessment surveys harnessed the insight of 165 individuals from diverse backgrounds and regions throughout the State of Hawaii. Distinct differences were found between the problem identification of specialists (policy makers and systems designers) and nonspecialists (everyday citizens), and there were significant differences found in the problem assessment between groups. The greatest differences in both phases emerged from social and psychological issues related to the emerging Ubiquitous Computing environment. It is argued that in addition to enormous technical changes, Ubiquitous Computing will serve to blur sociotechnical boundaries throughout the environment, challenging existing distinctions between humans and machine intelligences. As the potential for extending human capabilities via computing and communications technology is actualized in coming decades, what it means to be human will be a major source of public policy conflicts, and the early identification of problems related to these changes is essential in order to mitigate their impacts and socially negotiate a more desirable future.

Pathways to Housing Policy: Translating Research to Policy to Achieve Impact on Well Being

Policy emerges from the legislative, agency, and practice levels and from several pathways, including litigation; high profile or tragic events; community‐based service provision and practice innovations; and research evidence. This commentary places an emphasis throughout on discussions of the articles included in this issue. It explores pathways that influenced the development of housing policy targeting child and family well being and provides examples to illustrate each pathway. The article further highlights how research on housing and child well being has influenced policy and practice and notes gaps for further research. It concludes with suggestions for structuring research to more effectively assist policymakers to make informed decisions that achieve positive change for children, youth, and families.     

Relative Difficulty of Understanding Foreign Accents as a Marker of Proficiency

Foreign‐accented speech is generally harder to understand than native‐accented speech. This difficulty is reduced for non‐native listeners who share their first language with the non‐native speaker. It is currently unclear, however, how non‐native listeners deal with foreign‐accented speech produced by speakers of a different language. We show that the process of (second) language acquisition is associated with an increase in the relative difficulty of processing foreign‐accented speech. Therefore, experiencing greater relative difficulty with foreign‐accented speech compared with native speech is a marker of language proficiency. These results contribute to our understanding of how phonological categories are acquired during second language learning.     

Policy Frames, Metaphorical Reasoning, and Support for Public Policies

This article evaluates the predictive value of a new theory for understanding public support for alternative solutions to policy problems, which we call policy metaphors. A policy metaphor represents a particular form of cognitive framing that makes use of commonly understood social institutions and judgments about their effectiveness to form "archetypes" against which proposed solutions to new policy problems are compared. We test the extent to which both understanding of and preference for particular policy frames predicts the nature and strength of policy choices by a representative sample of the American public. After controlling for factors that past research has shown to be important in understanding public opinion, including general partisan and ideological attitudes, self-interest, political values, and emotions, the cognitive frames specified by the general theory of policy metaphors are shown to strongly predict public support for hypothetical solutions to three different policy problems. These frames also predict support for President Clinton's 1993–94 health care reforms after controlling for those same conventional predictors. Most importantly, we demonstrate that these cognitive frames help constrain the beliefs of even the least politically aware members of the general public. Discussion centers on the implications of this new approach for understanding public opinion.     

A policy maker’s dilemma: Preventing terrorism or preventing blame

Although anti-terrorism policy should be based on a normative treatment of risk that incorporates likelihoods of attack, policy makers’ anti-terror decisions may be influenced by the blame they expect from failing to prevent attacks. We show that people’s anti-terror budget priorities before a perceived attack and blame judgments after a perceived attack are associated with the attack’s severity and how upsetting it is but largely independent of its likelihood. We also show that anti-terror budget priorities are influenced by directly highlighting the likelihood of the attack, but because of outcome biases, highlighting the attack’s prior likelihood has no influence on judgments of blame, severity, or emotion after an attack is perceived to have occurred. Thus, because of accountability effects, we propose policy makers face a dilemma: prevent terrorism using normative methods that incorporate the likelihood of attack or prevent blame by preventing terrorist attacks the public find most blameworthy.     

The role of legal and moral norms to regulate the behavior of texting while driving

Despite a nationwide lawful effort to regulate texting-while-driving behavior, little change has been reported. This study assessed the effect of current legal enforcement on attitudinal and behavioral responses toward texting while driving in conjunction with potential influences of two types of perceived norms—legal and moral. An online survey was conducted with 313 college students recruited from three states where the history of a banning law of texting while driving varied (more than 3 years, less than 1 year, and none). The students self-reported perceived legal norm, perceived moral norm, perceived risk of texting while driving, frequency of texting while driving, attitude toward texting while driving, and intention of texting while driving. General linear model analyses revealed that the mere presence of legal enforcement showed a negative relationship with frequency of behavior only for the state with the banning law in effect more than 3 years. While the perceived legal norm showed inconsistent relationships with outcome variables, the perceived moral norm appeared most promising to discourage texting while driving among young drivers. A banning law for texting-while-driving behavior not only backfired on the actual behavior in a short-term effect, but also required a long-term exposure of the law to change the actual behavior among college students. On the other hand, cultivation of a moral norm to regulate the behavior of texting while driving is particularly encouraged in that the stable nature of this psychological variable can play a role to suppress possible reactance evoked by an external force. Policy makers are encouraged to harness their approach to regulate young drivers’ texting while driving with the strategy that appeals to the drivers’ moral beliefs rather than simply forcing them to comply with the law.     

Methods for Influencing Social Policy: The Role of Social Experiments

Research methods in community psychology have grown more diverse since the Swampscott conference, but rigorous social experiments maintain a place among the multiplicity of methods that can promote community psychology values. They are particularly influential in policy circles. Two examples of social experiments to end homelessness for different populations illustrate their role. Both studies show that offering extremely poor and disenfranchised people autonomy and the resources they seek works better than “helping” them to overcome deficits in ways designed by well‐meaning service providers. Experiments are neither the first nor the last method community psychologists should employ, but are a critical part of the field's armamentarium for systems change.