Community Psychology Research Research Articles

Sense of community and well-being in diaspora festivals

This study was prompted by a lack of empirical research addressing the overlap between sense of community and eudemonic well-being components, the limited attention paid to immigrant perspectives in well-being studies, and the presence of under-researched type of festival and population. To address these gaps, this study aimed to identify the dimensions of sense of community and the well-being outcomes of diaspora festivals. The study targeted an understudied group and its festivals: those of the Ethiopian diaspora community in the United States. Guided by the constructivist grounded theory method, the study obtained data through guided interviews, and simultaneously analyzed them to construct six domains of a sense of community applicable to diaspora festivals. The six elements of a sense of community were a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness, serving the com­munity, recognition, social support, and connection with diaspora, and comprised at least one eudemonic well-being component. Engagement, positive relationships, finding meaning in life, and a sense of achievement, were inherent in more than three of the six domains of a sense of community. Other well-being elements such as physical health and spirituality were evident in one domain. In conclusion, this study offers theoretical contributions to festival tourism, community psychology, human/tourism geography, and positive psychology research in multiple ways.

Ranking the community psychology research output of institutions and authors: A new system of evaluating the field.

There have been multiple efforts to evaluate the contributions of the field of Community Psychology, and one of the more popular methods has involved gathering citations and articles published in Community Psychology journals. In recent years, several sites have gathered citation analysis and article publication rates so that it is now relatively easy to summarize settings and scholar rankings. In the current study, articles published in the two major journals of the field of Community Psychology over the past five decades were evaluated for these publications and citations. Findings indicated that several of the settings with highest publication and citation rates have not developed Community Psychology graduate programs, thus indicating that many publishing authors are in settings without formal graduate programs in Community Psychology. The benefits and limitations of this method of ranking programs and individuals are reviewed.

Introduction to the special issue on critical realism.

This special issue explores how philosophy of science matters for both research and social action in community psychology. It explores the complex issue of what might be appropriate philosophical bases for community psychology theory, research, and practice. In particular, it focuses on critical realism, a relatively new approach to the philosophy of science. In this introductory article, we start by discussing the importance of philosophy of science for community psychologists. We then situate our subject by exploring the history of paradigms in community psychology. We next offer a brief description of critical realism by describing its assumptions on ontology (nature of the world), epistemology (theory of knowledge), axiology (theory of values), and methodology (theory of action).

Internalization of the model minority myth and sociodemographic factors shaping Asians/Asian Americans' experiences of discrimination during COVID-19.

Despite appearing positive, the model minority myth (MMM), or the perception that Asian Americans are "problem-free" minorities, maintains unfair racial hierarchies and discredits the pervasiveness of systemic racism faced by Asian Americans and other Black, Indigenous, and people of Color. This study investigated the role of internalized MMM in Asian/Asian Americans' (A/AA) experiences during the syndemic of COVID-19 and our society's racial reckoning. Using a mixed methods approach, we analyzed A/AA college students' open-ended responses to a query about their experiences as A/AA during COVID-19, which resulted in qualitative themes of Personal and Vicarious Discrimination, Vigilance, Safety due to Ethnicity, Safety due to Environment, and No Difference during COVID-19. We then conducted a series of logistic and linear regression models to examine how internalized MMM and sociodemographic factors (i.e., ethnic group, gender, andgenerational status) were associated with qualitative themes and quantitative measures of COVID-related discrimination. Overall, findings demonstrated that greater internalized MMM, as well as identifying as South Asian, male, and an international/first-generation immigrant student, were linked to fewer qualitative and quantitative reports of vicarious discrimination. We conclude with implications for research and practice in community psychology that further examine the racialized experiences among A/AA college students and ultimately seek to challenge the MMM and racial hierarchies perpetuating systems of oppression.

Examining awareness of privilege among midwestern college students: An analysis of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion.

Dominant group members often are not aware of the privileges they benefit from due to their dominant group membership. Yet individuals are members of multiple groups and may simultaneously occupy multiple categories of dominance and marginality, raising the question of how different group memberships work in concert to facilitate or inhibit awareness of multiple forms of privilege. Examining awareness of privilege is important as awareness may be linked to action to dismantle systems of privilege that maintain oppression and inequality. Grounded in intersectional scholarship, in this study we examined how occupying intersecting categories of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion corresponded to an awareness of White, male, and Christian privilege. In a sample of 2321 Midwestern college students, we demonstrated that students from marginalized groups broadly reported greater awareness of all forms of privilege than students from dominant groups, and the difference between marginalized and dominant groups was most pronounced when the specific group category (e.g., gender) aligned with the type of privilege (e.g., male privilege). We also tested interactions among race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, only finding an interaction between race/ethnicity and religion for awareness of White and male privilege. These findings helped to clarify that multiple group memberships tended to contribute to awareness as multiple main effects rather than as multiplicative. Finally, we examined mean differences among the eight intersected groups to explore similarities and differences among groups in awareness of all types of privilege. Taken together, these findings quantitatively demonstrate the ways in which group memberships work together to contribute to awareness of multiple forms of privilege. We discuss study limitations and implications for community psychology research and practice.

Critical realism methodology as a guiding framework for interdisciplinary theory enrichment: Reflections on a study of empowerment.

Philosophy of science and ontological assumptions underpin our work as scholars, explicitly, or implicitly. In this paper, we develop empowerment theory with a critical realism (CR) lens. Through the example of a study of empowerment, we examine how can it be used as a guiding paradigm for research in community psychology (CP). We sought to increase theoretical rigor by using a CR approach to interdisciplinarity. We put empowerment into conversation with Social Reproduction Theory and Black, Indigenous, People of Color feminisms, because both represent situated knowledge that address experiences with oppression and focus on dismantling systems of oppression. We illustrate how a CR approach shaped our understanding of empowerment, and in turn, provided an analysis that was (a) more nuanced and actionable, (b) more aligned with CP values and definitions of social justice, and (c) more likely to contribute to the field by developing an intersectional anticapitalist and feminist intervention into empowerment literature. This paper highlights how, aligned with an interdisciplinary CR approach, we questioned assumptions about empowerment theory, which influenced our empirical work so that we could provide a more focused critique of unjust social arrangements, and with it, the possibility to act upon those arrangements.

Music Workshops as Social Aesthetic Contributions to Cultivating Community Sensibilities

Abstract. Human connection and mutual exploration through engagements in the arts, in general, and music, more specifically, have been core features of community life in many settings for millennia. The importance of such modes of collective engagement has also gained renewed interest among psychologists. This article explores the use of arts-based practice in Brazilian organizational settings. Embracing the theoretical perspective of the bricoleur, we adopt a social aesthetic perspective as a basis for considering the cultivation of a sense of community and togetherness through music workshops. Our focus is on shifts in the social sensibilities of participants as they engage with each other through music. This article contributes to qualitative research in community and critical social psychology, where a turn to community arts is gaining increasing traction.

Fostering and sustaining transnational solidarities for transformative social change: Advancing community psychology research and action.

As we planned this special issue, the world was in the midst of a pandemic, one which brought into sharp focus many of the pre‐existing economic, social, and climate crises, as well as, trends of widening economic and social inequalities. The pandemic also brought to the forefront an epistemic crisis that continues to decentre certain knowledges while maintaining the hegemony of Eurocentric ways of knowing and being. Thus, we set out to explore the possibilities that come with widening our ecology of knowledge and approaches to inquiry, including the power of critical reflective praxis and consciousness, and the important practices of repowering marginalised and oppressed groups. In this paper, we highlight scholarship that reflects a breadth of theories, methods, and practices that forge alliances, in and outside the academy, in different solidarity relationships toward liberation and wellbeing. Our desire as co‐editors was not to endorse the plurality of solidarities expressed in the papers as an unyielding methodological or conceptual framework, but rather to hold them lightly within thematic spaces as invitations for readers to consider. Through editorial collaboration, we arrived at the following three thematic spaces: (1) ecologies of being and knowledge: Indigenous knowledge, networks, and plurilogues; (2) naming coloniality in context: Histories in the present and a wide lens; (3) relational knowledge practices: Creative joy of knowing beyond disciplines. From these thematic spaces we conclude that through repowering epistemic communities and narratives rooted in truth‐telling, a plurality of solidarities are fostered and sustained locally and transnationally. Underpinned by an ethic of care, solidarity relationships are simultaneously unsettling dominant forms of knowledge and embrace ways of knowing and being that advances dignity, community, and nonviolence.

Colonised minds and community psychology in the academy: Collaborative autoethnographic reflections.

We reflect on decolonization and in particular the process of decolonizing our own minds. We discuss the need for radical decolonization of psychology and for critique of community psychology'srelationship to both psychology and the Academy, noting ways in which community psychology itself becomes appropriated for the colonizing project of the Academy. Using collaborative autoethnography (CAE), a method that involves "collaborative poetics," which chimes with the emphasis on participatory research in community psychology and the decolonialist emphasis on rescuing repressed epistemologies, we review our own careers and identify ways in which our values have been compromised and our work assimilated into wider colonizing and oppressive practices that sustain the modern university. We conclude that community psychology can only decolonize if it is positioned in an agonistic relationship to mainstream psychology and exists as a radical, explicitly political, and ethical practice outside the Academy. The message of the decolonization and disalienation movements is that the biggest barrier to our effectiveness, and to social justice, is the fascism of our minds. Succumbing to the power and privilege embedded in the Academy and the oppressive and colonizing practices that sustain it conflicts with community psychology's purported values.

The role of memory practices in building spiritual solidarity for survivors of state violence.

This article examines memory as a tool for transnational solidarity that is grounded in spiritual connection with those who have been disappeared or killed by state actors in Colombia. Remembering is one of the ways people come together to push against mechanisms of state violence that render survivors as invisible. By interviewing 15 survivors of state violence in Colombia, this study shows how memory is a life force transmitting agency while simultaneously keeping survivors' memory alive through a network of spiritual solidarity. In this ethnographic research, I ask: How can memory, grounded in spiritual connection, be a form of transnational solidarity and a tool for healing and social justice? The findings offer a powerful definition of spiritual solidarity and show how it is done through memory practices by (1) using memory symbols in everyday actions to connect to loved ones, (2) keeping the memories of loved ones alive by "seeing" them in others and in their surroundings, (3) creating spaces for others to build a spiritual relationship with their own loved ones, and (4) making memory work life's purpose. This article concludes with a set of recommendations for how to conduct community psychology research in service of social justice movements.

Issue Information

American Journal of Community PsychologyVolume 67, Issue 3-4 p. 249-250 Issue InformationFree Access Issue Information First published: 10 August 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12430AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume67, Issue3-4Special Section: Engage for Equity: Advancing the Fields of Community‐based Participatory Research and Community‐engaged Research in Community Psychology and the Social SciencesJune 2021Pages 249-250 RelatedInformation

A Systematic Review of Adolescent Masculinities and Associations with Internalizing Behavior Problems and Social Support.

Interest in the connection between masculinities and mental health continues to grow. However, no previous systematic review has explored this association for adolescents. We present the systematic review of 29 articles that explore the connection between adherence to stereotypical male gender role norms (e.g., emotional restriction), attributes (e.g., “ambitious”), and identity (most commonly, gender “typicality”) and internalizing behavior problems and social support. A total of 24,795 adolescent boys (6th‐12th grade) were included in the reviewed studies from 1997–2017. In the quantitative articles (n = 20), associations varied by aspect of masculinity assessed. Specifically, we found that greater endorsement of “masculine” traits (e.g., ambitious, assertive) was generally associated with fewer internalizing behavior problems and greater social support. However, lower gender “typicality” and higher adherence to stereotypical gender role norms were generally associated with more internalizing behavior problems and lower social support. In the qualitative articles (n = 9), the most predominant theme was emotional restriction (i.e., a gender role norm) and consequences for mental health. While research in this area is newer for community psychologists, the connection between masculinities and mental health is directly relevant to the field. Given the focus on individual‐level conceptions of masculinity and mental health found in our review, we describe key future directions for masculinities research in community psychology.

Use of Research Evidence Generated by Youth: Conceptualization and Applications in Diverse U.S. K-12 Educational Settings.

Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a social justice-focused approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities. Although YPAR is oriented to generating research for action, with evidence-based recommendations often aimed at influencing adults with power over settings and systems that shape youths' lives, we have little understanding of how YPAR evidence influences the thinking and/or actions of adult policymakers or practitioners. In general, the participatory research field lacks a theoretically informed "use of research evidence" lens, while the use of evidence field lacks consideration of the special case and implications of participatory research. To start to address these gaps, this paper presents a conceptual linkage across these two fields and then provides six illustrative case examples across diverse geographic, policy, and programmatic contexts to demonstrate opportunities and challenges in the use of YPAR evidence for policy and practice. Our illustrative focus here is on U.S. K-12 educational contexts, the most-studied setting in the YPAR literature, but questions examined here are relevant to YPAR and other systems domestically and internationally, including health, educational, and legal systems. HIGHLIGHTS: The use of research evidence (URE) field identifies characteristics of research and conditions that strengthen URE. Youth-led Participatory Action Research is a special case for factors that influence research use. Six case examples across diverse K-12 contexts illustrate facilitators and barriers for YPAR use. We propose next steps for community psychology research and action to promote the study and use of YPAR evidence.

Substance Use Research with Indigenous Communities: Exploring and Extending Foundational Principles of Community Psychology.

Many Indigenous communities are concerned with substance use (SU) problems and eager to advance effective solutions for their prevention and treatment. Yet these communities also are concerned about the perpetuation of colonizing, disorder-focused, stigmatizing approaches to mental health, and social narratives related to SU problems. Foundational principles of community psychology-ecological perspectives, empowerment, sociocultural competence, community inclusion and partnership, and reflective practice-provide useful frameworks for informing ethical community-based research pertaining to SU problems conducted with and by Indigenous communities. These principles are explored and extended for Indigenous community contexts through themes generated from seven collaborative studies focused on understanding, preventing, and treating SU problems. These studies are generated from research teams working with Indigenous communities across the United States and Canada-inclusive of urban, rural, and reservation/reserve populations as well as adult and youth participants. Shared themes indicate that Indigenous SU research reflects community psychology principles, as an outgrowth of research agendas and processes that are increasingly guided by Indigenous communities. At the same time, this research challenges these principles in important ways pertaining to Indigenous-settler relations and Indigenous-specific considerations. We discuss these challenges and recommend greater synergy between community psychology and Indigenous research.

Developing undergraduate community psychology pedagogy and research practice

In this study two community psychology students describe their experiences in participating in different types of “green” volunteer sustainable programs. In the first scenario, Anthonie Collins describes his experiences in working with young men in a youth detention facility and how the participants discovered the intrinsic value of maintaining a vegetable community garden. In the second scenario, Jordan Seitz describes her experiences in organizing a community apple harvest at a local fruit tree orchard in Wyoming, MN. At the conclusion of their community service projects, participants were interviewed regarding their overall subjective experiences in participating in an outdoor “green space” community service project and how superordinate programs that provide increased positive contact helped improve understanding of persons from ethnically diverse cultures and appreciate the value of outdoor “green” voluntary programs.

Community psychology, digital technology, and loss: Remembrance activities of young adults who have experienced the death of a close friend

AbstractWe argue for community psychology to include digital communications technology in research on ways that the social environment shapes fundamental human experiences. We present a qualitative study that examined the narrative accounts of 20 young adults who experienced the death of a close friend to describe both traditional and digital forms of remembrance in coping with loss. Findings suggest that young adults' activities both online and offline were intended to acknowledge the loss, exchange social support, create and sustain memories of their deceased friend, and facilitate continued communication with the deceased. Participants described both costs and benefits to their real and virtual remembrance activities. Findings illustrate ways that the study of digital technology adds to our understanding of grief and bereavement and contributes to dominant cultural narratives about coping with death. Implications of findings for research in community psychology are discussed.

Decolonial Pedagogy in Community Psychology: White Students Disrupting White Innocence via a Family Portrait Assignment.

A decolonizing standpoint in community psychology is discussed in relation to the Family Portrait Assignment-a pedagogical tool developed and implemented to facilitate white students' decolonial thinking. The Family Portrait Assignment contributes to the limited of decolonial pedagogical tools in community psychology. Through a critical discourse analysis of student's essays, I discuss how decolonial thinking, including a critical sociohistorical examination of colonialism, racism and whiteness, was facilitated. Decoloniality as the disruption of white innocence, an ideological construct embedded within systems of power that sustain structures of whiteness, guides the analysis of student's essays. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the Family Portrait Assignment facilitated white student's decolonial thinking, specifically their process of engaging with and disrupting white innocence. A discussion of decoloniality in community psychology pedagogy, theory, research and action concludes this paper.

Schools as Vehicles to Assess Experiences, Improve Outcomes, and Effect Social Change.

Schools are important settings that can be utilized to yield a positive impact on youth and the many issues our society faces. In this Presidential Address, I identify key issues and directions for the field, advocating that we need to expand our ecological focus, improve school climate, and collaborate with schools to effect change. To illustrate these key themes, findings from four projects with k-12 youth and educators in the United States are described, and these projects have the following foci: protective factors for youth exposed to violence, teacher-directed violence aspart of an APA Task Force, school climate and neighborhood factors in relation to academic outcomes, and school transitions for students with disabilities. Challenges and future directions to build upon community psychology theory, research, practice, and policy are discussed.

A participatory discourse analysis of service users’ accounts of staffed meeting places in Norwegian community mental health care

Since the 1960s, deinstitutionalisation has been salient in mental health reforms across the West. In Norway, this culminated in the National Action Plan for Mental Health (1999-2008), where meeting places in community mental health care were deemed a prioritised strategy to counter social isolation among people in psychosocial hardships. However, during the same period in England, meeting places were beginning to be contested for contributing to social exclusion. This is an inquiry of meeting places in Norway guided by the following research question: How do service users discuss their encounters with the spaces and people of meeting places? Situated in community psychology and participatory research traditions, we engaged in a participatory discourse analysis of four focus group discussions with 22 service users from meeting places. We detail and discuss four central discursive constructions of meeting places against the backdrop of a civil society identified as fraught with sanism that stigmatises and excludes service users: a compensatory public welfare arrangement positioning service users as citizens with social rights; a peer community positioning service users as peers who share common identities and interests; spaces of compassion validating service users as fellow human beings who are precious in their own right; and greenhouses facilitating service users to expand their horizons of possibility. This inquiry implies that meeting places could mean everything to the people who attend them by facilitating opportunities considered less accessible elsewhere in their everyday lives in a sanist civil society.

Engaging critical community resilience praxis: A qualitative study with Mapuche communities in Chile facing structural racism and disasters.

Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile and have survived histories of colonialism, socionatural disasters, and more recently, increasing conflicts with the Chilean state. This study aimed to engage critical theories and examine resilience processes from indigenous perspectives while exploring the impact of racism, intersecting adversities, and ongoing decolonial struggles in Mapuche communities. Decolonial qualitative methods, situational analysis, and community-engaged participatory approaches were utilized in application of a critical community resilience praxis (CCRP). First, an interagency collaborative entitled Mapuche Equipo Colaborativo para la Investigación de la Resiliencia (MECIR) was established. MECIR involved partnerships between a Chilean national research center for disasters, a nongovernmental organization of indigenous advocates/researchers, and a Mapuche community health center. MECIR completed semistructured interviews with 10 participants (N=10) in addition to ethnographic observations. Four themes of resilience emerged: newen, "strength and spiritual life-nature force"; azmapu, "ancestral systems of social organization and tribal law"; nietun, "cultural revitalization"; and marichiweu, "resistance." Findings contribute to reconceptualizations of resilience from Mapuche perspectives while identifying culturally meaningful strategies for promoting racial justice and mental health equity. Results show benefits of CCRP in community psychology research in an international setting.