Behavioral Community Psychology Research Articles

Behavioral community psychology in the Amazon rainforest: Suggestions for when behavior analysts meet alterity.

The present paper aimed to discuss and interpret methodological issues and contributions arising mainly from professional field work conducted by a behavior analyst working as a behavioral community psychologist in the Amazon rainforest, in northern Brazil. We looked at such a professional’s day-to-day circumstances and challenges within a semi-isolated Indigenous community, and systematized impressions and implications for practice with diverse verbal communities and social groups. We believe that looking at experience with those specific social contexts enables us to critically examine behavior analysis community practice more generally. We provided examples of said practices and examined their explicit and more subtle consequences. In light of that, we discussed features of a collaborative methodological stance while working in the field that we wish to foster and encourage. We conclude by pointing out advantages of more in-depth and intensive relational methods for behavior analysts in community practice.

A Behavioral Community Psychology Framework for Analyzing Housing Stability for Homeless Families: Modifying the Rapid Re-Housing Metacontingency

A Behavioral Community Psychology Framework for Analyzing Housing Stability for Homeless Families: Modifying the Rapid Re-Housing Metacontingency

Goal Setting with Latinx Families of Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Case Studies.

Behavioral community psychology focuses on studying issues that matter to communities, unpacking contextual factors that impact people’s behaviors, and identifying strategies to address such issues. Goal setting is one such strategy often used by behavioral psychologists. Grounded in the values of behavioral community psychology and a behavior analysis paradigm, this study illustrated two case studies of Latinx parents of children with disabilities where goal-setting strategies were implemented to promote behavior change. The first case study focused on the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors and routines among Latinx families of children with disabilities in the United States. The second case study examined goal setting related to youth development by parents of adolescents with disabilities in Colombia. In both cases, participants received training on goal setting and had opportunities to discuss progress toward achieving their goals, share action steps taken, and discuss the contextual challenges or barriers that they experienced. The results indicate that behavioral goal-setting procedures can be effective in helping parents attain their goals and brainstorm strategies for addressing behavioral and contextual challenges. Implications for future research advancing behavioral community psychology are discussed.

A Reflection on Community Research and Action as an Evolving Practice

Community research and action is an evolving field of practice with multiple influences. Its varied ways of knowing and doing reflect recombined elements from different disciplines, including behavioral science, community psychology, public health, and community development. This article offers a personal reflection based on my evolving practice over nearly 50 years. The focus is on three types of influence: (a) engaging with different communities, fields, and networks (e.g., discovering shared values, diverse methods); (b) building methods and capabilities for the work (e.g., methods for participatory research, tools for capacity building); and (c) partnering for collaborative research and action, locally and globally. This story highlights the nature of the field’s evolution as an increasing variation in methods. Our evolving practice of community research and action—individually and collectively—emerges from the recombination of ideas and methods discovered through engagement in a wide variety of contexts.

Behavioral Methods in Community Settings: A Neglected or a Vital Force?

Behavioral community psychology emerged in the 1970s, during a time when many psychologists and mental health professionals were becoming more skeptical of an exclusively person-focused, primarily psychodynamic paradigm. Behavioral approaches brought the advantages of a focus on tangible and quantifiable phenomena and an appreciation of setting influences on actions. Contemporaneously, the emerging field of community psychology also addressed the discontent with psychodynamic, individual-driven theories, providing an emphasis on systems and ecological contexts to understand and promote mental health and social justice. The synthesis of behavioral approaches and community psychology resulted in the creation of the field of behavioral community psychology. The failures and successes of the behavioral community combination may be understood from historical, theoretical, and methodological perspectives.

From Ecological Behaviorism to Response Generalization

The concept of response generalization is addressed, as it was discussed in a symposium at the 2001 meeting of the International Association for Behavior Analysis and presented in three articles in this journal issue. Relationships between behavioral ecology, social validity, and response generalization are examined from the perspective of behavioral community psychology, especially research conducted by the author and colleagues to increase safe driving practices. The challenge of moving beyond evaluating intervention side effects to planning for a beneficial spread of effect is entertained, including theory to predict whether treatment generality will be desirable or undesirable. The issue of whether intervention side effects should be termed “response generalization” is covered by pinpointing critical distinctions made in the preceding articles, one claiming the spread of effect discussed here is response generalization and the other two articles proclaiming it is not. These latter two presentations reject the response generalization label for very different and contradictory reasons.

地域社会に根ざした「教育方法」から「援助・援護方法」への拡大 : 行動的コミュニティ心理学からの示唆

地域社会に根ざした「教育方法」から「援助・援護方法」への拡大 : 行動的コミュニティ心理学からの示唆

Three Metacontingencies in the Pre-Perestroika Soviet Union

The field of behavior analysis progressively has expanded its horizons. In the 1930s and 40s, it focused on molecular responses of birds and small mammals. The 1950s and 60s witnessed an expansion to consideration of primate behavior, including that of humans. The 1970s and 80s experienced the behavioral community psychology emphasis, which investigated behavior and its controlling contingencies within the context of the social network that characterizes· communities. As the 1990s begin, behavior analysis has matured to the point where it can go beyond Skinner's early discussions of large scale social processes (1953, 1971), and consider, in increasingly sophisticated manners, the contingencies that societies impose on their members and the functional relationship of these contingencies to the behavior of their constituents. The interest in behavior analysis on a societal level has been manifested in two directions. Some writers have developed cogent theoretical perspectives and general analyses. Malagodi (1986), Malott (1988), Segal (1987), and Glenn (1986, 1988) exemplify this focus. Glenn, in particular, has been working systematically to integrate behavioral theory with cultural materialism, an anthropological perspective developed by Harris (1979). Other writers, observing the aetna! developments in the world, have been drawn to the widespread social, political, and economic modif"tcations that have been implemented by various socialist countries. Lama!, for example, analyzed the contingencies extant in China (1984) and I have focused on Hungary (Rakos, 1988a) and on socialism in general (Rakos, 1988b, 1989, in press), prompting lively debate with Uhnan (1988, 1989). The two articles -in this section continue this latter emphasis by presenting behavior analyses of -~oviet society before, and then under, the perestroika (economic restructuring) that was implemented in the mid 1980s. Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign and domestic policy initiatives have captured the imagination and admiration of statesmen and women, and of ordinary citizens, throughout the world. The Soviet Union is, of course, the most important socialist player in global political and economic manuevers, though China will no doubt

Toward the explication of the value contexts of the community psychologies.

Value issues are inseparable from any scientific pursuit and they become particularly influential in the applied scientific areas of community and behavioral community psychology. The explication of value positions is one way of dealing positively with the ubiquity of value issues. The role of values in community mental health, community psychology, and behavioral community psychology are contrasted. Implicit value positions are entrenched in the terminology of community psychology and community mental health theory while theory in behavioral community psychology, because of its functional rather than structural orientation, does not contain the same level of value positions. Traditionally, value positions have been concerned with the quality of life, i.e., what makes up the "good life." However, the worldwide crises of starvation, nuclear armament, and pollution necessitates an orientation to a more fundamental type of value, i.e., survival of the species or the opportunity for life. Through the explication of quality-of-life values, the public and psychologists designing community helping programs can evaluate the compatibility of quality-of-life and opportunity-for-life values.

Community psychologies and values: the importance of being urnless.

This paper is a response to the Rappaport (1984) and Attneave (1984) commentaries on the O'Donohue, Hanley, and Krasner (1984) article on the value contexts of the community psychologies. We have focused on similarities and differences between our positions and those of Rappaport and Attneave. We are all in agreement that behavioral community psychology is not value free, a point which is emphasized in our earlier paper. One of our goals was to foster the discussion of value explication and its implications for the community psychologies. The Rappaport and Attneave commentaries, in effect, have accomplished this in an excellent and exciting manner.

Seeking justice in the real world: A further explication of value contexts

Following a brief clarification of the value assumptions of community mental health and community psychology, the error of assuming that behaviorism is less value based than other theories of man or strategies for doing science is demonstrated. First epistemological and then historical-sociological arguments are presented to show that the contribution of behavioral community psychology to the explication of values is more a function of its association with community psychology and of its relatively recent emergence as a competitor for ascendence in applied psychology than of its idiosyncratic structural characteristics. Finally, an alternative to the view that survival values should be of prime importance to community psychology is offered.

Behavioral community psychology: an introduction to the special issue.

An overview of this special issue, and of behavioral community psychology, is provided, beginning with a summary of terminology and history. Five dimensions on which behavioral community interventions may be classified are then described: (a) subject matter/target behavior, (b) behavioral procedures used, (c) experimental design, (d) intervention level, and (e) time focus. The studies composing this special issue serve as illustrations of these dimensions. This is followed by a discussion of issues important in designing and implementing behavioral community projects. Finally, challenges facing the field are noted.

Time budget methods for behavioral community psychology

Obtaining reliable and cost-efficient data on everyday behavior occurring in community settings presents a formidable problem for behavioral community psychologists. This article (a) describes a set of methods, called time budgets, for recording sequences of everyday behaviors and their social and physical contexts; (b) discusses the quality of data yielded by these methods; and (c) illustrates their utility for behavioral community psychology. Time budgets meet important criteria for behavioral assessment in community settings by permitting direct assessments of ecobehavioral systems at various levels of social organization. Data from these methods can be used in diagnosing problems, planning interventions, and evaluating outcomes. An application of time budgets in research on the elderly is presented to illustrate one use of the method. Time budgets provide a dependable, flexible, and cost-efficient alternative to naturalistic observation for many assessment situations in behavioral community psychology.

Behavioral community psychology: a review of recent research and applications.

Behavioral community psychology: a review of recent research and applications.

Training Undergraduates in Behavior Therapy and Behavioral Community Psychology

A clas s of undergraduates , enrolled in a psychol ogy internship prog ra m , were provided training in behavior t he rapy a nd beh a vioral community psychology. A t the begin ning of t he quarter, each u ndergraduat e se l ec t ed and operationally defined a behavio r t o chart a nd u ltim a tel y mod i fy (e. g. , studying , w e i ght control, etc.). After th e un dergraduates h ad colle c ted bas eli ne data and imple mented inter v entions on th ei r sel f -control projects , they bega n ga th e rin g d ata o n a commun i ty problem ( e.g . , vanda li sm, environ mental hazards, litt er, e nergy waste). The projects prov id ed t he un d ergraduates a real - l ife e xp er ience for understanding the p rocess of effec ting behavior change at th e in dividual and com mu ni ty l evels . Of most i mpo rtance was the op portunity provide d the undergraduates for e xp l or ing an alternative concept u al model, the c o mm unity p sy ch ology approach, for extending mental health serv i ces.

The effects of a behavioral training program on nonprofessionals' endorsement of the “psychosocial” model

An experiment was conducted to determine the impact of behavioral training on psychiatric aides' endorsement of a psychosocial versus medical model. Following an eight-week training program in behavior modification, experimental staff significantly changed their attitudes in a direction away from the “medical” model and towards the “psychosocial” orientation, relative to a no-training control group. The findings were discussed in terms of the utility of such a measure for evaluating “behavioral community psychology” interventions.

Behavioral community psychology: conceptualizations and applications.

During the past few years there have been important developments in two related fields, i.e., community psychology as it affects the delivery of mental health services and behavior modification as an approach for understanding etiology and treatment of mental disorders. Although behavioral technology has been applied increasingly to community areas, there has been little comprehensive integration of the two approaches. This failure may be due to a lack of clarity both in the definitions and assumptions of the two approaches. This paper presents an integration of community and behavioral psychology, first by delineating their critical concepts and then by presenting illustrations of behavioral community psychology.

BEHAVIORAL COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY: TRAINING A COMMUNITY BOARD TO PROBLEM SOLVE1

This study demonstrated the effect of training nine lower socio-economic adults participating as policy board members in a federally funded rural community project to make behaviorally defined statements to increase problem-solving behaviors in board meetings. A multiple-baseline design across subjects and skills was used to analyze the behavioral categories of: (1) stating the problem; (2) finding solutions to the problem, and (3) implementing the action to the solution. Problem-solving responses during board meetings increased for subjects following training and remained higher than baseline during follow-up.