American journal of community psychology最新文献

This article provides a first-person perspective on the Kūpuna Interview Project, a culturally resonant, community-based, qualitative research project designed to examine the health experiences of Native Hawaiian elders. The voices included in this article are from two elder research participants, three representatives of a community partner organization, one university faculty member, and one student member of the research team, all of Native Hawaiian ancestry. Together, these individual testimonies highlight the importance of community-engaged, culturally relevant narrative research. Lessons learned include the importance of self-reflexivity among members of the research team when working with the community, meaningful gifts for participants, the need for interviewers to take time getting to know the participants and their communities, and the potential for research to create and strengthen meaningful relationships. Finally, this project demonstrates the potential of future research in community psychology to intentionally facilitate spaces for narrative co-creation by participants and researchers.

We are continuing to live in unsettling times that demand responses from researchers, scholars and activists to create and mobilise knowledge for liberation, wellbeing, and justice. This commentary draws from my lived experience and research in migration that I use to highlight the rootshock of displacement and the contributions of community psychology to understand these impacts. The commentary invites engagement with the decolonial turn, the need to examine longer histories of colonization and imperialism and how these continue to shape understandings of self and others, and intergroup relations. The commentary also emphasizes decoloniality as a movement of embrace that involves expanding our ecologies of knowledge and practice to support critical solidarities for liberation, wellbeing, and justice.

Latinx adolescents, representing 25% of the U.S. child population, face significant mental health challenges due to aggressive immigration enforcement and policies rooted in racism, nativism, and ethnocentrism. These systemic issues contribute to increased rates of sadness, hopelessness, and suicidal behaviors among Latinx adolescents. Addressing this crisis requires interventions that mitigate the harms of these policies and promote youth voice and agency to foster resilience and resistance and, ultimately, liberation from oppression. This study explores how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can empower Latinx immigrant youth to build resilience and resist oppressive systems threatening their well-being. Using a grounded theory qualitative approach, we examined the PARA Jóvenes YPAR project, which engaged 10 Latinx immigrant youth from a community with a history of aggressive immigration enforcement. Through triangulating in-depth interviews, facilitator reflections, and photovoice transcripts, we identified key YPAR components—near-peer mentorship, community building, cultural affirmation, creative expression, and critical inquiry—that promoted and supported youth in developing critical consciousness, cultural authenticity, self-knowledge, and connectedness. This study highlights the transformative potential of YPAR to promote mental health and liberation for Latinx immigrant youth impacted by immigration policies. It underscores the need for further research on its efficacy as an intervention.

Policing has long constituted a public health crisis for Black communities in the United States, and continues to pose a profound threat to the safety and well-bein of community members, underscoring the need to more toward accountability and care. Many societal discourses plaguing the current zeitgeist include addressing what to do about policing. Obtaining perspectives from police personnel is beneficial to increasing understanding of these issues. The current study examined police perceptions of strained police-community relationships through individual interviews with 26 police personnel from a single large metropolitan US police agency. Over half (n = 18) of participants identified as sworn personnel (e.g., police with arrest powers like those working patrol or as a detective). Others (n = 8) identified as civilian or non-sworn personnel (e.g., forensic employees, analysts, instructors). Grounded theory was used to code data, resulting in three parent codes: Observed Policing Harms, Unhelpful Attitudes, and Recommendations for Police Reform. Personnel identified five factors contributing to observed policing harsh on members of the community: (1) policies that afford subjectivity in policing, (2) police culture, (3) training practices, (4) unaddressed police-community disconnect, and (5) police hiring and selection practices. Unhelpful attitudes included statements reflecting thinking patterns that might serve as barriers in promoting better police community relations. Three recommendations for police reform emerged: (1) humanize Black community members, (2) emphasize police mental health, and (3) use restorative justice practices in policing. Addressing the complex array of challenges outlined in this study requires multifaceted strategies that prioritize transparency, accountability, community-centered approaches, and significant cultural shifts within policing and law enforcement. Implementing these reforms is crucial in fostering trust, legitimacy, and mutually respectful and safe interactions and relationships between police agencies and the communities they police. These transformations hold the potential to propel us toward a model of restorative policing.

This study investigated young Black and Latine organizers' perceptions of how mainstream narratives of gun violence relate to and influence their antigun violence organizing work. We analyzed interview data from 22 Black and Latine young people (Mage = 19.91, 55% women) who were engaged in gun violence prevention organizations in the United States. The results centered on three themes: (1) Young people's journeys of gaining awareness of structural racism through personal experience with gun violence, (2) media's perpetuation of structural racism through its dismissal of community gun violence, and (3) the need for community-based solutions to address the root causes of gun violence. These findings shed light on how societal elements, including the media, policymakers, and white-led gun violence prevention organizations, perpetuate structural racism and pose challenges to the organizing efforts of Black and Latine youth. Furthermore, these findings amplify young Black and Latine gun violence prevention organizers' experiences with gun violence and their frustrations towards the discriminatory media portrayals of gun violence in their communities, as well as recognize the importance of their organizing work.

Using youth mentors to deliver evidence-based psychosocial services has been proposed to increase the reach of treatments, in part given the affordability and ubiquity of mentors in youth settings. Further, tests of mentor-delivered motivational interviewing (MI) have shown increases in youth mentees' academic performance and wellbeing. Yet, traditional methods of training mentors to use MI can be costly and time-consuming. Previous work has suggested the value of asynchronous, brief, just-in-time training (JITT) to help offset these challenges; however, MI JITT for mentors has not yet been formally evaluated. As such, here, we report on a preliminary study of MI JITT videos for youth mentors. Mentors in the program were randomly assigned to training-as-usual or training-as-usual plus JITT. MI attitudes, knowledge, and skills were measured via self-report pre- and post-intervention. Results indicate that assignment to the JITT video condition was associated with significantly improved reflection skills. Effect size analyses also suggest moderate improvements in understanding MI mechanisms and theory, and in other MI skills (e.g., asking open-ended questions). Mentors found the JITT videos acceptable and usable and reported understanding their content. The article concludes with a discussion of considerations for future research and implementation.

Community coalitions are well-positioned to address local conditions affecting health. Coalitions rely on interactions among members to address community issues and plan for sustainability. Individuals and agencies participate voluntarily, and substantive decisions are generally made as a group. Hence, coalitions operate largely through advice rather than top-down directives. This study examined whether advice-seeking patterns within coalitions influenced members' perceptions of their collective outcomes. Indegree advice-seeking is centered on consulting a few specialized sources and outdegree advice-seeking draws upon a few people to reach out to numerous others. Surveys at two timepoints collected data from an unduplicated total of 1256 members of 62 coalitions in Pennsylvania and Missouri on their advice-seeking ties, with responses aggregated to the coalition level. Regression analyses examined how coalition patterns of intersectoral communication and indegree and outdegree centralization, respectively, were associated with changes in perceived community improvement, sustainability planning, and coalition sustainability. Intersectoral communication was not related to coalition outcomes. Indegree advice-seeking centralization was negatively associated with planning for coalition sustainability (B = −0.43, β = −0.22, 95% confidence interval [−0.84, −0.01], p < .05); and outdegree advice-seeking centralization was negatively associated with coalition sustainability (B = −0.88, β = −0.31, 95% CI [−1.65, −0.10], p < .05). These findings suggest that decentralized advice-seeking patterns foster coalition sustainability.

Perceived residential environment quality (PREQ) plays a crucial role in the aging process and quality of life of older adults, particularly in relation to their sense of community (SOC) and desire to age in place. This study aims to explore the impact of PREQ on SOC among retired residents, examining both the mediating role of emotions and the moderating effect of length of residence (LOR). A questionnaire survey was conducted with a sample of 1,158 retired community residents aged 50 years and older. The Chinese version of the perceived residential environment quality indicators (PREQIs) was used to assess the overall residential environment quality, including architectural and urban planning aspects, socio-relational aspects, functional aspects, and contextual aspects. The results revealed that PREQ and its sub-dimensions are generally positively correlated with SOC, with positive and negative emotional experiences mediating the relationship between PREQ and SOC. Furthermore, LOR was identified as a moderator in the link between PREQ and SOC, to some extent. Firstly, the findings reaffirm the significant role of comprehensive and specific community living environments in the emotional well-being and sense of community among retired residents. Secondly, for policymakers and stakeholders, the findings hold practical implications for actively coping with the aging issue and constructing age-friendly communities.

Asylum-seeking immigrants from Central America experience high prevalence rates of traumatic experiences and posttraumatic stress (PTS). Nonetheless, it is unknown how each type of trauma correlates uniquely to PTS variance and how cultural values may uniquely lower PTS. The present study hypothesized that, after controlling for demographics, (1) general trauma/natural disasters would be the strongest trauma-type correlates to PTS, and (2) religiosity, familismo-support, and self-efficacy would be negatively correlated to PTS. As part of a larger international study, n = 103 participants were sampled at the Texas-Mexico border. Participants were administered a series of mental health and cultural-values screeners in Spanish. A multiple hierarchical regression analysis revealed a significant model predicting PTS, with general exposure to natural disasters as the strongest correlate to PTS. Moreover, familismo-support, but not self-efficacy, significantly correlated with lower PTS scores. Finally, contrary to the hypothesized direction, religiosity was positively correlated to PTS. In this sample of Central American asylum-seekers, religiosity was correlated with higher PTS, aligning with negative religious coping models. Familismo-support was the only association to lower PTS scores. Clinical implications and future directions relevant to culturally responsive interventions and psychological assessments are discussed.