Environmental and Individual Influences on Australian Students' Likelihood of Staying in School

In this longitudinal study, the author examined environmental and individual influences on the likelihood of Australian adolescents staying in school. Participants were 6,778 Anglo Australian, 350 Asian, and 472 European students (mean age = 14.7 years) who were in Year 9 when the study began. The analyses indicated that adolescents from middle social status backgrounds and Asian families were more likely to stay in school than were those from lower social status backgrounds and Anglo Australian families; academic self-concept, achievement, perceptions of environments, and aspirations had a large independent association with staying in school; and there were significant differences in relationships among the aforementioned variables for adolescents from different ethnic groups and among those who decided to stay in or drop out of school.     

Perceived lack of training moderates relationship between healthcare providers’ personality and sense of efficacy in trauma-informed care

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Medical patients often have trauma histories that are not routinely assessed, which can adversely affect health outcomes. Despite growing awareness of this issue, there is limited understanding of factors that influence provider competency in trauma-informed care (TIC). The study examined healthcare providers’ personality traits in relation to their sense of TIC efficacy, taking into account perceived barriers to TIC and professional quality of life.

Study Design: The study used cross-sectional survey methods to examine our central hypothesis that provider personality traits and perceived barriers to TIC would be associated with TIC-efficacy, and to explore interactions among study variables.

Methods: Survey data were collected from 172 healthcare providers examining TIC knowledge, TIC-efficacy, perceived barriers to TIC, personality traits, and professional quality of life.

Results: TIC-efficacy was positively correlated with “intellectence/openness” and inversely correlated with “neuroticism” and perceived lack of training as a barrier. “Intellectence/openness” interacted with perceived lack of training to predict TIC-efficacy, suggesting that providers with lower “intellectence/openness” report greater TIC-efficacy when lack of training is not perceived as a barrier.

Conclusions: Provider personality traits and perceived barriers to TIC appear related to providers’ TIC-efficacy. Implications for overcoming barriers to TIC through training and implementation are discussed.     

Ethics in the Teaching of Mental Health Professionals

Summary

It is the position of the authors that mental health professionals-in-training must be well versed in the ethical/legal matters of clinical practice. Indeed, most graduate programs in the field of mental health require formal training in Ethics. The California School of Professional Psychology (Alliant International University) San Diego campus has developed a model that requires (a) an ethics course integrated with the student's on-campus supervision in the Fall and Spring semesters at the practicum level, focusing on the American Psychological Association's Ethics Code (2002) and California's Licensing Laws; and (b) an advanced ethics course (in the fourth year of training) that focuses on the integration of ethical and legal issues in clinical practice and providing a knowledge base of sound ethical judgment. Syllabi for these two courses are included.     

Promoting Hmong Refugees’ Well-Being Through Mutual Learning: Valuing Knowledge, Culture, and Experience

Refugees who resettle in a new country face numerous struggles, including overcoming past traumas and coping with post-migration stressors, such as lack of meaningful social roles, poverty, discrimination, lack of environmental mastery, and social isolation. Thus, in addition to needing to learn concrete language skills and gain access to resources and employment, it is important for refugees to become a part of settings where their experiences, knowledge, and identity are valued and validated. The Refugee Well-Being Project (RWBP) was developed to promote the well-being of Hmong refugees by creating settings for mutual learning to occur between Hmong adults and undergraduate students. The RWBP had two major components: (1) Learning Circles, which involved cultural exchange and one-on-one learning opportunities, and (2) an advocacy component, which involved undergraduates advocating for and transferring advocacy skills to Hmong families to increase their access to resources in their communities. The project was evaluated using a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. This article discusses data from qualitative interviews with participants, during which the importance of reciprocal helping relationships and mutual learning emerged as significant themes.     

2001 SEYMOUR B. SARASON AWARD ADDRESS: The Spirit of Community Psychology

Community psychology as a field may have lost some of its original spirit; a spirit dominant at the founding of the field. Spirit is a difficult concept to discuss since it is a concept beyond usual discourse in psychology as a denotative, measurable and verifiable concept. Taking the lead from William James, Spirit, however elusive, is most essential to a sense of self. I offer three suggestions to enhance and to make our individual and collective spirit more vital: (1) Continuing education in the history of community psychology; (2) Creating time to share stories about our work; (3) Creating safe settings to enlarge our spirit. These ideas are offered as pragmatic suggestions to enable us to create more coherence between our personal and professional selves.     

THE TREATMENT OF SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS IN SCHOOL SETTINGS USING A TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE MODEL

We evaluated the feasibility of local school personnel conducting functional analysis and reinforcement-based treatment procedures within actual classroom settings. Following an initial in-service workshop on functional assessment and differential reinforcement procedures, on-site technical assistance was provided two to four times per month to local school personnel working in transdisciplinary teams. Overall results suggest that local school personnel were able to implement all procedures adequately with periodic technical assistance. In addition, functional analysis was effective in identifying individual maintaining contingencies, the derived treatments were effective, and the results were maintained throughout the approximate 18 months of this investigation.     

Publication trends in 25 years of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

All articles published in the first 25 years of JABA (1968 to 1992) were reviewed to classify the percentage of articles published in the following categories: (a) type of article, (b) subjects, (c) setting, (d) behavior-change agent, (e) target behavior, (f) use of basic principles, and (g) miscellaneous procedures. Overall percentages and trends are reported in each category. Results indicate an increase in the percentage of articles with participants and target behaviors in developmental disabilities and a decrease in the percentage of studies targeting academic behavior, verbal behavior, and other child behavioral excesses. The most frequent setting continues to be a school; however, there is a clear trend towards community and other naturalistic settings. Results also highlight the increasing complexity and multicomponent nature of JABA interventions. Potential implications for future applications are discussed.     

Activity settings as the unit of analysis: A theoretical basis for community intervention and development

Theory, methods, and action develop within context, one of which is the intellectual climate of an era. Community psychology is directly and indirectly interactive with many intellectual currents, such as postmodernism, semiotics, hermeneutics, and dialogism. These ideas are discussed as they impact on community psychology, with an emphasis on the reemergence of meaning as a central condition of psychology and community. Meaning is of key importance to the unifying concept in the transactional theoretical model which is presented. How this model might serve as a conceptual framework for an asset approach to community intervention and development is discussed. Increasingly, it is recognized that the development of theory to guide community research and action is necessary to advance intervention and to realize the potential of community psychology. It is argued that community psychology is positioned by concepts and practice squarely at the point of emerging thought, and can make fuondational contributions to general social science. The next article in this special section illustrates concepts of this model in an early education program and the remaining article illustrates the influence of ecocultural factors.     

The effects of a vitamin supplement on the pica of a child with severe mental retardation

The effects of a common multiple vitamin on the pica of a child with severe mental retardation and anemia were evaluated. A BAB design revealed that pica was decreased by the vitamin. The results suggest that pica can be effectively treated by implementation of a simple nutritional or biological intervention. Further research investigating the generality of this finding and the effects of combining biological and behavioral interventions are discussed.     

Methodological Issues in the Direct Observation of Parent–Child Interaction: Do Observational Findings Reflect the Natural Behavior of Participants?

This review examines evidence for the utility and validity of direct observational techniques for answering particular research and clinical questions. Observational techniques often involve recording behavior in settings that are relatively unnatural for families. However, it is argued that construct validity of observational methods depends partly on whether the findings are representative of participants' typical everyday behavior. Evidence is reviewed concerning whether observational findings are affected by the presence of the observer, and by two factors which have been neglected in the literature, namely the type of task imposed by the observer (e.g., directing parent and child to play rather than observing spontaneous interaction) and the location of the observations (e.g., clinic or laboratory rather than home). The review suggests that the presence of an observer does not necessarily distort the nature of interactions. However, the small number of studies in this area suggest that interactions in structured or artificial settings are not necessarily representative of those normally taking place at home.