Designing a behavioral program for a barrio in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Health in Housing initiated a behavioral program of education and skills training for children and adults in a community of 30,000 persons living in substandard conditions in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. To measure achievement in the long-range project, 21 families of Flor del Campo participated in a preliminary three-part survey of their (a) health, (b) housing and the environment, and (c) family history. Doctors, designers, and educators worked with Honduran personnel in the first survey. Following functional analyses of the home and surrounding environment and the physical status of the individuals living there, procedures provide the family with treatment and training for home and environment improvement. Graphic, verbal, and numerical data, incorporated into a master computerized system, record events of each family member: training programs experienced, health care delivery courses taken, medical treatments, growth of children, literacy changes, educational courses completed, kinds and amounts of foods eaten, household and building materials purchased. Ongoing functional analysis and a long-range evaluation are made of the progress of each participating individual in a family. Teams revisit each house to observe and record any changes in the physical and environmental facility and the health and life-styles, and to report any indications of new health problems or recurrences.     

The resident researcher: An alternative career model centered on community

Considers the potential benefits and costs of an alternative career model for community researchers, one in which professionals specialize in the community where they live. By virtue of their local familiarity, resident researchers can make more informed judgments about research problems and methods. They can employ longitudinal designs to assess change and be available to assist in interpretation and implementation of research. Potential costs include the possibility of provincialism, unintended researcher effects, ethical dilemmas, the need to cultivate community relations, and role conflicts. Interdisciplinary training programs and research field stations can contribute to the development of the resident researcher role. Researchers in the community can help generate grass roots support for social science research. We acknowledge Louise Shedd Barker's helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.     

A PERSONALIZED SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHING CHECKING ACCOUNT SKILLS TO ADULTS WITH MILD DISABILITIES

This study evaluated the efficacy of a personalized system of instruction to teach checking account skills to persons with mild disabilities. Using a self-paced manual, 8 participants in two groups were taught to write checks, complete deposit slips, and reconcile monthly bank statements. Four participants were assessed for generalization from the classroom to community sites and demonstrated nearly perfect performance. A multiple probe design showed that acquisition occurred sequentially for each skill only after training using the self-paced manual. Follow-up sessions demonstrated that participants maintained the checking account skills. The results provide evidence of the effectiveness and adaptability of a personalized system of instruction for teaching complex monetary skills to persons with mild disabilities.     

AN ANALYSIS OF AND INTERVENTION IN THE SEXUAL TRANSMISSION OF DISEASE

Sexually transmitted diseases are a serious threat to the public health. Indeed, when an individual seeks medical treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, health authorities frequently attempt to identify, procure, and treat that individual's sexual contact(s). We conducted a comparative analysis of three alternative approaches to tracing the sexual partners of individuals diagnosed as having a sexually transmitted disease. The first approach involved counseling individuals (n = 27) infected with either gonorrhea or nongonococcal urethritis and exhorting them to procure their sexual partners for treatment. In addition to counseling, the second and third approaches involved distributing “occasion cards” for patients to use when informing sexual contacts of the need for treatment. Moreover, in the second approach, the counselor (a nurse or physician) informed infected patients (n = 19) that they and their partners could waive the $3 clinic fee contingent upon the partners seeking treatment within 1 week. In the third approach, the counselor asked infected persons (n = 19) to accept a follow-up telephone contact if their sexual partners failed to seek treatment within 1 week. The third approach was most effective. Ninety percent of the partners identified through this approach sought treatment, versus only about 60% of the partners in the other two conditions. The third approach was also the least expensive, costing about $2.95 to procure each partner for treatment.     

Effects of public posting on driving speed in Icelandic traffic

We replicated a study by Van Houten, Nau, and Marini (1980) that had revealed reductions in vehicle speeding following the posting of percentages of drivers not speeding on a sign at roadside. Our subjects were drivers entering a residential area where the speed limit changed from 90 km/hr (55.9 mph) to 60 km/hr (37.3 mph). A total of 4,409 vehicle speeds were taken from two observation sessions per day for 20 consecutive weekdays. The intervention consisted of a single posting condition, in which a hypothetical daily percentage of drivers not speeding was posted on a feedback sign, followed by a double posting condition, in which a sign posting a best result was erected beyond the feedback sign. Results revealed a significant speed reduction from an average of 69.0 km/hr (42.9 mph) during baseline to 63.4 km/hr (39.4 mph) during single posting. Average speed during double posting was 62.9 km/hr (39.1 mph). The percentage of drivers exceeding 70 km/hr (43.5 mph) dropped from 41.0 during baseline to 20.5 during single posting. The significant speed reductions add to the generality of findings of similar studies in Canada and Israel and offer possible explanations for the failure of feedback posting to reduce speed in the U.S.     

推进新时代中国社区心理学新形态建设

建设中国特色的社区心理学是时代的呼唤和要求。在党的二十大精神指引下,新时代中国社区心理学需要坚持中国化时代化的马克思主义为指导以推进理论建设;以新时代社区心理建设为场域,助力社会主义核心价值观培育;构建新时代中国社区心理学服务路径,助推人民共同富裕。总体而言,中国特色社区心理学的理论建设与实践探索需要关注新时代社区发展中涌现出的新问题,提出解决中国社区发展问题的中国办法和中国方案,努力推进中国社区心理学新形态的建设。     

Community engagement,greening, and violent crime: A test of the greening hypothesis and Busy Streets

Researchers have documented that vacant lot greening can reduce community-level crime and violence. Busy Streets Theory (BST) suggests that residents who are involved in the greening process can help to improve physical environments and build social connections that deter crime and violence. Yet few researchers have explored how community engagement in the greening process may affect crime and violence outcomes. We applied BST to test the effects of community-engaged vacant lot greening compared to vacant lots that received either professional mowing or no treatment, on the density of violent crime around study lots. Using mixed effects regression models, we analyzed trends in violent crime density over the summer months from 2016 to 2018 at 2102 street segments in Youngstown, OH. These street segments fell within 150 meters of an intervention parcel that was classified as one of three conditions: community-engaged maintenance, professional mowing, or no treatment (control). We found that street segments in areas receiving community-engaged maintenance or professional mowing experienced greater declines in violent crime density than street segments in areas receiving no treatment, and more decline occurred in the community-engaged condition compared to the professional mow condition. Our findings support BST and suggest that community-engaged greening of vacant lots in postindustrial cities with a concentrated vacancy can reduce crime and violence.     

Pride in our community: Reflecting on LGBTQ publications in the American Journal of Community Psychology

In this Virtual Special Issue (VSI), we curate and discuss a set of 28 articles previously published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP) focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. The purpose of this VSI is to bring visibility to this body of scholarship in AJCP and to reflect on how the strengths of our field have been used throughout this work in pursuit of supporting LGBTQ wellbeing. In this VSI, we first discuss articles that help to set the historical background for publications in AJCP. We then discuss papers under the broad themes of HIV/AIDS, identities within ecological context, and social activism among LGBTQ communities. We then reflect on opportunities for our field to further leverage our strengths in contributing to LGBTQ scholarship. Overall, this VSI celebrates the contributions to LGBTQ research already present in AJCP, and we hope inspires future contributions to the pages of AJCP and beyond.     

Recontextualising moral injury among military veterans: An integrative theoretical review

Moral injury was originally conceived as a socially-inflicted wound of betrayal experienced by military veterans (Shay, 1994). However, moral injury has since been redefined by psychological researchers as an individualised, predominantly perpetration-driven, and psychopathological phenomenon (e.g., Currier et al., 2015; Jinkerson, 2016). However, social scientific researchers (e.g., Hodgson & Carey, 2017; Molendijk, 2019; Wiinikka-Lydon, 2017) have contested mainstream psychology's medicalisation and decontextualisation of moral injury. This theoretical review integrates insights from across these discourses, and brings them into dialogue with ideas from moral psychology, evolutionary science, and community psychology. The aim of this cross-disciplinary review is to promote a more holistic understanding of moral injury that does justice to its individual and social dimensions. Drawing on these different theoretical strands, this paper proposes that moral injury can be best understood as a psychological wound to basic human needs for social belonging and cohesion. The implications of this integrative understanding of moral injury for applied psychologists and other societal actors are explored. While the relevance of moral injury to civilian populations such as health and social care professionals is clear (e.g., Dombo et al., 2013; French et al., 2021), this paper focuses on military veterans, whose experiences originally prompted the coinage of the term. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.     

工作-家庭中心性与延迟退休态度的关系研究

延迟退休态度是影响新退休政策推行的重要社会心理因素。本研究采用《延迟退休态度问卷》等工具,抽取450名临近退休员工,考察工作-家庭中心性与延迟退休态度的关系以及工作投入、组织支持感在其二者关系上的作用机制。研究发现：（1）临近退休员工对延迟退休的态度较为消极。（2）低组织支持感条件下,工作投入在工作-家庭中心性与延迟退休态度之间起到完全中介作用。低组织支持感不利于缓解家庭中心性员工对延迟退休的消极态度。（3）高价值认同条件下,家庭中心性与工作投入、延迟退休态度的正向关系弱化。给予员工高价值认同可以提升对延迟退休的积极态度。高关心利益也可缓解家庭中心性员工对延迟退休的消极态度。