Search

We report on a grounded theory study of late-arriving immigrant youth (LIY) who arrived in the United States at 16–18 years of age and were referred to daytime General Education Diploma (D-GED) programs. These programs provide an alternate path to a high school diploma for youth with insufficient knowledge of English to complete graduation requirements before turning 19 years. Based on interviews with 38 youth from Latin America, we propose the core category of our grounded theory to be students Navigating Child and Adult Immigrant Narratives while making educational and career decisions. This process begins before immigration when youth imagine ambitious alternate selves—ideal educational and career selves in the United States, consistent with the American Dream and immigrant child narrative. The D-GED programs represent a compromise between a child and adult educational pathway. Students in these programs felt excluded from the regular high school but received social and emotional support while on a faster track to graduation and self-sufficiency as adults. However, students lacked concrete information and roadmaps for how to attain their ambitious goals. The study highlights the unique challenges faced by LIY as they develop ambitious and realistic education and career goals.

The study examined community influences on acculturation, social integration, and cultural adaptation among elderly Russian-speaking immigrants residing in two communities with different ethnic density. Results revealed direct, indirect, and moderation effects of community. The residents of the dense ethnic community had lower American social support and American acculturation than residents of the dispersed community. Both communities had comparable levels of acculturative stress and American cultural alienation, underscoring an indirect effect of community on cultural adaptation via acculturation and social support. The ethnic community also moderated relationships of acculturation and social support to cultural adaptation, suggesting their varied adaptive and maladaptive pathways. American acculturation was associated with increased acculturative stress in the dense community and reduced acculturative stress in the dispersed community. Russian acculturation and social support were typically adaptive in the dense community and maladaptive in the dispersed community. The study supported the Ecological Acculturative Frameworkxcopy (EAF) that underscores the importance of conceptualizing acculturation as embedded within the community sociocultural context that reflects the lived experiences of individuals interacting with their contextual settings, and empirically examining adaptive and maladaptive pathways provided by these settings.

Objectives The foundational role culture and Indigenous knowledge (IK) occupy within community intervention in American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities is explored. To do this, we define community or complex interventions, then critically examine ways culture is translated into health interventions addressing AIAN disparities in existing programs and research initiatives. We then describe an Indigenous intervention based in the cultural logic of its contexts, as developed by Alaska Native communities. Yup'ik coauthors and knowledge keepers provided their critical and theoretical perspectives and understandings to the overall narrative, constructing from their IK system an argument that culture is prevention. Conclusions The intervention, the Qungasvik (phonetic: koo ngaz vik; "tools for life") intervention, is organized and delivered through a Yup'ik Alaska Native process the communities term qasgiq (phonetic: kuz gik; "communal house"). We describe a theory of change framework built around the qasgiq model and explore ways this Indigenous intervention mobilizes aspects of traditional Yup'ik cultural logic to deliver strengths-based interventions for Yup'ik youth. This framework encompasses both an IK theory-driven intervention implementation schema and an IK approach to knowledge production. This intervention and its framework provide a set of recommendations to guide researchers and Indigenous communities who seek to create Indigenously informed and locally sustainable strategies for the promotion of health and well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Islamic norms and Islamophobia present unique challenges for Muslim adolescents in Western countries. For Muslim students, even "secular" public schools are not a religion-free space because their religious beliefs and values are central in their manner of living. To inquire more about these issues, an exploratory sequential design mixed-method study was conducted that included focus groups and a survey addressing the public school experiences of Muslim adolescents in a Midwestern state in the United States and how those experiences are related to their academic achievement, educational aspirations, and psychological adjustment. Overall, the findings characterize this study's sample as coping well in the school context in terms of academic achievement, high educational expectations, and relatively low levels of psychological distress. However, those who experience greater frequency and severity of hassles at school report higher levels of psychological distress. In particular, the frequency of hassles associated with representing Islam, limited English competency, relations with both Muslim and non-Muslim peers, and religious discrimination at school related to increased distress. Together, these findings suggest the importance of considering both individual and ecological determinants of wellbeing for Muslim adolescents. The findings also suggest the importance of looking more carefully at the sample, context, and time when the data were collected before making generalizations within or across cultural and/or religious groups.

This paper addresses two major and potentially conflicting movements: the importance of diversity as both a conceptual and political issue and the rise of the evidence-based practice movement in education. This tension is particularly important when evaluating and reporting universal interventions because of their intended applicability across diverse groups of children and adolescents. This study contributes to this discussion through an analysis of published school-based universal social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention evaluations in terms of their theoretical and empirical attention to student diversity characteristics. We defined student diversity in terms of five characteristics: gender, race/ethnicity, SES, disability status, and sexual orientation/gender identity. We assessed how and when demographic characteristics were reported, how these characteristics were analyzed as moderators of program outcomes, and how differential effects based on diversity were incorporated into reported intervention generalizability discussions. Results showed that diversity characteristics were inconsistently reported across articles. Most studies did not test for moderating effects, but those that did found inconsistent effects across diversity characteristics. Further, conceptual and/or empirical support for conducting the moderation analyses was often not provided or sufficiently supported by previous literature or a hypothesis. This research highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of how SEL program effects may be moderated by student demographic characteristics and suggests caution about the generalizability of the reviewed SEL programs across diverse groups of children and adolescents.

The study investigated underemployment among a sample of Russian-speaking refugee adults in the U.S. resettled in two communities that differ in ethnic density. Community context, acculturation, and their interaction related to underemployment. Descriptively, residents of the dense ethnic community had higher Russian and lower American acculturation, greater social integration into co-ethnic networks, lower perceived support from American friends, were more likely to have fellow Russians help them find a job, and less likely to find the job independently. Predictively, living in the dense community and lower levels of American acculturation positively associated with underemployment, while Russian acculturation was unrelated to underemployment. In addition, significant interactions suggested that American acculturation was beneficial for reducing underemployment in the dispersed community but was associated with increased underemployment in the dense community, while greater Russian acculturation was associated with increased underemployment in the dispersed community only. The present study demonstrated context specificity in the relationship between acculturation and underemployment and reaffirmed the value of an ecological approach to conceptualizing acculturative experiences and their relationships to adaptation outcomes.

The purpose of the current study was to develop a measure of English Language Learner (ELL) teacher stress that highlights multiple aspects of teachers' work settings that impact their work stress. Ninety-eight ELL teachers from 29 U.S. states completed an online questionnaire, including the current measure in development, a demographic survey, the Teacher Stress Inventory, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The development of the final 40-item ELL Teacher Stress Measure (ETSM) is described. The new ELL Teacher Stress Measure addresses a significant gap in the field and provides a tool that is useful in a variety of school settings.

Objectives The development and validation of a wellness measure among the Yup'ik of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska is presented, with the overarching goal of supporting locally relevant health practices in this Alaska Native population. Method A survey containing the wellness measure and several additional psychosocial variables was completed by 493 Yup'ik individuals from 7 different highly rural communities in western Alaska. Participants ranged in age from 14 to 94 (M = 38.55, SD = 17.14), and slightly more than half were female (58.62%). Results Individuals who scored higher on the wellness measure reported greater happiness, greater overall health, greater communal mastery, a larger and more satisfying social support network, and coping styles that were more likely to be active, accepting, and growth-oriented, and less likely to involve drugs and alcohol. Conclusions This project advances research on the health implications of enculturation by specifying particular patterns of culturally sanctioned beliefs and behaviors that appear most beneficial.

Child culture brokering occurs when immigrant children help their families navigate the new culture and language. The present study develops a model of the child culture broker role that situates it within the family and community economic and acculturative contexts of 328 families from the former Soviet Union. Path analysis was utilized to explore the relationships of community and family economic and cultural contexts with child culture brokering, child emotional distress, and family disagreements. All children reported some culture brokering for their parents. Less English proficient parents with lower status jobs, and living in areas with more Russian speaking families tended to utilize their children as brokers more often. Further, community economic conditions also predicted brokering indirectly, mediated by parent job social status. Brokering was related to child emotional distress and family disagreements. Further, culture brokering was a mediator of the impact of parent job social status on both child emotional distress and family disagreements. These results add to our understanding of the culture broker role and emphasize the utility of approaching research on it from an ecological perspective.

In this critical summary the editors summarize main themes that cut across special issue papers including challenges in introducing interventions into communities theorized as dynamic systems, strengths and problems presented by multilevel interventions in single communities, the value of community based culturally situated preventive interventions, and some solutions to evaluation of interventions in complex social settings.

In immigrant families, culture brokering (CB) occurs when children mediate the new culture for their family. The authors examined CB in Russian immigrant adolescent-mother dyads (N = 226) to determine the types and amounts of CB that Russian adolescents performed, why adolescents assumed the CB role, and how the role affected adolescent and familial functioning. The present results indicated that most adolescents reported CB for their families (89%). Children of families that more recently arrived in the U.S., with mothers who were less American-language acculturated, culture brokered more. Higher levels of CB related to (a) higher adolescent stress and reports of problems at home and with friends and (b) lower feelings of school membership. Parent-reported problems at home did not relate to CB. The authors discussed implications for future research on the role of the child as culture broker.

A differentiated model of acculturation was used to assess the relationship of acculturative styles to school adaptation among a group of 110 refugee adolescents from the former Soviet Union. Acculturation was assessed with respect to both American and Russian cultures and, within each culture, distinguished among language competence, behavior, and identity. School adaptation was assessed in terms of academic (GPA), behavioral (disciplinary infractions), and attitudinal (sense of school belonging) components. Results suggested that differing patterns of overall American and Russian acculturation were associated with differing school outcomes, as were language competence, behavior, and identity with respect to the different cultures. In general, higher levels of American acculturation predicted school adaptation while aspects of Russian acculturation were differentially related to school adaptation for different subgroups. Results indicated the importance of conceptualizing acculturation as a multidimensional concept with respect to both culture or origin and culture of resettlement. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 27–38, 2005.

In a sample of 146 adolescents, the authors developed and validated a measure of acculturative hassles for Soviet Jewish refugees. They based the measure on an ecological perspective, which focuses on hassles involving person-environment transactions occurring in life domains of school, family, peers, and language. The authors reviewed conceptual and methodological issues in existing instruments and incorporated efforts to address current limitations into instrument development. The measure was correlated with psychological distress, level of acculturation to Russian and U.S. cultures, and outcomes in life domains; it contributed to outcomes over and above effects of nonacculturative hassles. Implications for measurement of acculturative hassles are discussed.

This article focuses on the process of acculturation for first-generation Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents and their parents who have resettled in the United States. First, the extent of acculturation to the new and the old culture is assessed independently. Second, acculturation is assessed multidimensionally, including the constructs of language competence, behavioral acculturation, and cultural identity. Third, the extent to which life stage differences at immigration affect the acculturation process is assessed. Overall, the data suggest that acculturation appears to occur in a linear pattern over time for most dimensions of acculturation, with acculturation to the American culture increasing and acculturation to the Russian culture decreasing. However, Russian language competence for the parents did not diminish with length of residence in the country. Furthermore, an unexpected acculturative gap was observed between parents and children with respect to Russian identity, with adolescents being more identified with the Russian culture than their parents.

SUMMARY Parent involvement in children's education has increasingly become a focus of research, policy, and practice that offers evidence of diverse benefits for families. A theoretical framework for understanding involvement of Latino parents was developed based on interviews with 14 Spanish-speaking parents from low-income backgrounds. Parent strategies for addressing school-related concerns emerged as a critical component of that theoretical framework. Discussion of individual and collective strategies and their contexts leads to suggestions for promoting effective engagement of parents from low-income, immigrant, and limited English proficiency groups.

Despite important advances in recent years in evidenced-based approaches to prevent and treat mental, behavioral, and emotional disturbances in children and adolescents, the long-standing difficulties of moving research findings from bench to bedside have persisted, even in the face of rising problems in youth. To address these continuing difficulties in translating research results into practice, we suggest that researchers move away from studies that ask what works under optimal, university-based, research conditions to investigations that examine what works that is also palatable, feasible, durable, affordable, and sustainable in real-world settings. We discuss the challenges entailed in moving university-based, "efficacy" research into more real-world community settings. We discuss principles for effective and meaningful collaborations between university investigators and community partners, including (a) an enhanced focus on external validity, (b) the incorporation of the values and needs of communit...

Ethical issues flow from and are embedded in contexts of practice. Contexts of practice refer to the diverse social settings where interventions occur. Primary prevention activities require new professional roles in these diverse social settings. These new roles engage the professional in new activities, which in turn allow new ethical issues to arise. This article takes an ecological perspective on ethical issues arising from the enactment of new preventive roles intended to affect groups or communities. Within this perspective, the concepts of context and culture take on special conceptual significance. Four ecological assumptions about preventive interventions intended to affect groups or communities are offered as a means of framing ethical issues in such interventions. Finally, several approaches to developing ecological knowledge about the contexts of practice are presented as ways of furthering our ability to conceptualize and cope with ethical issues in preventive interventions intended to affect groups or communities.

The meta-analysis provided by Durlak and Wells (1997) represents a major contribution to the ongoing conversation around primary prevention with children and adolescents. By providing an empirically based model that fits the existing domain of published studies and dissertations, it clarifies both important distinctions in the field as well as illuminating what approaches, what methods, and what populations are receiving the most attention. In and of itself, this contribution represents a heuristic for future research choices which should be considered when conceptualizing and implementing preventive interventions. In reporting on the effect sizes of published interventions it provides further support for the basic assertion that preventive interventions can affect the positive development of children and adolescents, at least in the short run. In addition, their analysis of what is there promotes a discussion of what is not there in the existing literature. By drawing attention to such relatively neglected issues as an explicit assessment of the developmental level of participating children and adolescents and the lack of description of program implementation, they further push us to consider how to improve our understanding of preventive interventions in the future. Further, by showing that most research in preventive interventions with children and adolescents does not appear in community psychology journals, they implicitly challenge community psychology to assess its own distinctive contribution to this exciting area of inquiry and intervention. For these and many other reasons, the paper represents extremely important work.

Summary This paper examines the transition of twelfth grade students graduating from high school. The authors followed two groups, one drawn from mainstream educational programs, and the other from special education programs for students with learning disabilities or behavioral disorders. Participants were followed from the last semester of their senior year until six months following their graduation from high school. The study is presented through an ecological perspective that emphasizes the relationships between individuals and their social contexts. Attention is paid to both education-and employment-related transition outcomes, and to the processes involved in negotiating the transition, both generally and with regard to seeking employment. Results indicate that while most of the participants in both groups were engaged in some type of meaningful activity following the transition, the special education group showed higher risk for disengagement. Respondents reported relying on informal resources (e.g...

The Classroom Environment Scale (CES), originally developed for use in traditional public school classrooms, was revised for use in special education classrooms. The scale, which assesses students' perceptions of various aspects of the classroom, was administered to students in 79 special education classrooms in 16 residential and day treatment schools serving special education students with behavior disorders and emotional disturbance. Psychometric analyses showed that only seven of the nine aspects of the classroom found in the original CES were reliably reported in special education classrooms. The revised scale was found reliable for use in special education classes in residential and day treatment settings.

The contention is that in providing an account of the intervention process beyond the usual parameters of reporting, Weinstein and her colleagues have helped bring to the fore issues in the conduct and reporting of intervention research which are anomalous to most current theories and accounts. Taken seriously, the issues openly discussed could provide a useful step toward reducing the discrepancy between how we carry out interventions and how we say we carry out interventions. Through attempts to incorporate these issues into theory, we increase the verisimilitude of our ideas and develop a more differentiated filter for our community work. If, as Cronbach asserts, “social science is cumulative, not in possessing ever-more refined answers about fixed questions, but in possessing an ever-richer repertoire of questions” (1986, p. 91), accounts such as those provided by Weinstein and her colleagues can indeed serve as a heuristic for theory by telling it like it was.

One distinctive approach to community psychology intervention research involves finding ways to contribute to the development of communities. Ecological inquiry is a primary theoretical framework for this work. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the spirit of ecological inquiry may be expressed in the descriptions of how we design, conduct, and evaluate community interventions. We first elaborate a set of criteria as a heuristic framework for carrying out and documenting community intervention writing, theory, and action. We then pilot the application of these criteria to explore the presence of an ecological emphasis within intervention studies published in the AJCP between 1994 and 2002. This exercise helped illuminate the extent to which an ecological perspective is reflected in intervention accounts, and select intervention accounts that reflect a substantial ecological emphasis are described. Further, this review highlights the areas of our written work which contain fewer makers of ecological inquiry, as with the relevant exclusion of citizens in formative intervention roles. We conclude with a series of reflections about constraints on published intervention accounts and recommendations for those interested in furthering the spirit of ecological inquiry through their research and action commitments to community development.

The authors suggest several explanations why the growth in the field of primary prevention has not been accompanied By a requisite level of attention to the ethical issues involved in prevention research and practice. One explanation is the field's lack of recognition of the paradigmatic assumptions and values which underlie the different approaches to primary prevention. Different prevention paradigms entail different ethical issues, and the process of elaborating these paradigms will promote a long-overdue examination of the ethical implications of primary prevention work. A heuristic for examining ethical issues is proposed in the form of three assertions about primary prevention. The development of a specific ethical code for the prevention field is viewed as being premature, because the field currently lacks the shared identity and standards of practice which form the basis for an accepted code. However, it is certainly time for responsible preventionists to undertake an ethics-based reflect...

The study reported here explored differences in environmental characteristics between classrooms for adolescents identified as behaviorally disordered and traditional secondary school classrooms. Using the Classroom Environmental Scale and a measure of school satisfaction, 38 classrooms in six special schools were compared to a normative sample of classrooms. Findings suggest that while some homogeneity exists among programs for behaviorally disordered youth, the perceptions of these students differ qualitatively from students in traditional school programs. In addition, students in special schools perceive order and organization lower and teacher control higher than did students in traditional school programs. Results suggest that student satisfaction with school was related to greater levels of perceived involvement, affiliation, and teacher support for the special students but not for students in the traditional school sample. The study has implications for further research on the assessment of classroom environments and the development of measures appropriate for special and traditional school populations.

In immigrant families, culture brokering (CB) refers to the ways in which children and adolescents serve as mediator between their family and aspects of the new culture. This study focused on the debate in the literature about whether CB implies "role reversal" in the family and "adultification" of the adolescent or whether CB is better understood as simply one of the many ways that immigrant children contribute to family functioning. Results indicated a mixed picture with respect to this debate. Greater amounts of adolescent CB were indeed related to higher adolescent reports of family conflict, but also to greater family adaptability. In addition, the amount of CB was unrelated to family satisfaction and family cohesion. Secondary questions centered on the relationship of CB to adolescent and parent demographic and acculturation variables. Here, CB was related to parent acculturation patterns but not those of adolescents. Implications for future research on the CB role are discussed.

The origins of mental health consultation as a distinctive profession date back to the 1890s when Lightner Witmer ‘s Philadelphia clinic began involving teachers and family members in the intervention processes of children and adolescents (see Levine & Levine, 1970). Throughout the following 60 years, consultation had a somewhat checkered history in terms of emphasis, and did not evolve a coherent conceptual framework until the writing of Caplan (1959, 1970). However, over the past quarter of a century, consultation has become an integral part of the mental health professions. Consultants report working in a wide range of settings around a variety of problems. Different models of consultation are evolving, research is becoming more sophisticated, and the ethical responsibility of the consultant is receiving increased attention (Dougherty, 1995; Grady, Gibson, & Trickett, 1981; Levin, Trickett, & Hess, 1990; Mannino, Trickett, Shore, Kidder, & Levin, 1986; Trickett, 1993)

In considering the influences of microsystems on adolescent substance use, familial and peer contexts have received the most extensive attention in the research literature. School and neighborhood settings, however, are other developmental contexts that may exert specific influences on adolescent substance use. In many instances, school settings are organized to provide educational services to students who share similar educational abilities and behavioral repertoires. The resulting segregation of students into these settings may result in different school norms for substance use. Similarly, neighborhood resources, including models for substance use and drug sales involvement, may play an important role in adolescent substance use. We briefly review literature examining contextual influences on adolescent substance use, and present results from two preliminary studies examining the contribution of school and neighborhood context to adolescent substance use. In the first investigation, we examine the impact of familial, peer, and school contexts on adolescent substance use. Respondents were 283 students (ages 13 to 18) from regular and special education classrooms in six schools. Although peer and parental contexts were important predictors of substance use, school norms for drug use accounted for variance in adolescent use beyond that explained by peer and parental norms. Data from a second study of 114 adolescents (mean age = 15) examines neighborhood contributions to adolescent substance use. In this sample, neighborhood indices did not contribute to our understanding of adolescent substance use. Implications for prevention are presented.

The paper presents a test of an ecologically differentiated model of social network orientation for adolescents that distinguished between different social network reference groups (family, peers, and nonfamily adults). The model was tested in two consecutive studies. Study 1 describes initial model development (N = 120). Study 2 presents a confirmatory factor analysis with a second sample (N = 430) to replicate the factor structure developed in Study 1. Results supported a three-factor model of network orientation that differentiated between network reference groups. Analyses of concurrent and predictive validity indicated that orientation to network reference groups was differentially related to the perceived quality and frequency of support from members of respective social network groups. Group differences (gender, race) regarding network orientation to different network reference groups were consistent with studies of other social network processes. Implications for the study of the network orientation and the study of social networks more generally are discussed.

The present paper integrates an ecological perspective developed in community psychology with research and intervention following disasters and traumatic stress. I approach this topic as a community psychologist who has spent a professional life developing ways of understanding the interdependence of individuals and the community contexts in which they are embedded. The perspective I have found useful is an ecological one, called the “ecological analogy” or “ecological metaphor” by its originator, James Kelly and his colleagues (Kelly, 1968, 1979, 1986, Kelly, Azelton, Burzette, & Mock, 1994; Trickett, Kelly, and Todd, 1972; Trickett, 1984; Trickett and Birman, 1989). To understand the relevance of this metaphor to the area of disaster and traumatic stress, it may be useful to sketch the origins of the field of community psychology, since the substantive areas of community psychology and disaster and traumatic stress spring from different roots.

Research and intervention involving primary prevention [related to mental health and psychology] have grown dramatically in the past 10 years. However, little attention has been paid to ethical issues in primary prevention. This article proposes a framework for increasing awareness of such issues. The framework centers on explicating the contexts where prevention activities occur and the roles adopted by interventionists engaging in these activities. Several assumptions underlying primary prevention are stated, and ways of clarifying ethical issues are proposed.

Examined the transition of adolescents from middle school to high school through a longitudinal research design. Consistent with other studies, results indicate that the transition is associated with declines in grade point average and attendance, and that these changes persist or worsen over the course of the freshman year. Life stress and social support from family, friends, and school personnel each showed expected relationships with some outcome variables, though these varied in pattern and magnitude. Furthermore, there was some indication that these sources could be used in multivariate analyses in assessing their relationship to outcomes. Finally, means-ends problem-solving skills did not predict levels of posttransition support. Results are seen as supporting a differential model of the role of individual and environmental resources in the high school transition, especially with regard to the negative changes in grades and attendance and the pattern of correlations between social support sources and outcomes.

The study reports the results of a factor analysis of the Classroom Environment Scale using a sample of 229 classrooms with 3,480 students. A six-factor solution accounting for 51% of the variance was found. These factors, consistent with the general conception of environments underlying the development of the scale, fall into three domains: personal development dimensions, system maintenance dimensions, and relationship dimensions. In classrooms, these domains are evident in the friendship and authority aspects of the teacher role and in student-student relationships. An analysis of their relationship to locale of classroom (urban, suburban, and rural), sex of teacher, and size of class revealed relationships of each of these external variables to aspects of the classroom environment. The relationship of the factor structure to the general conception of environments and to the original 9-dimension scale is also discussed. The assessment of social environments has recently come of age as a major conceptual and empirical research task. In spite of Barker's (1970) long-standing interest, only recently have psychologists devoted effort in this direction. One significant methodological approach which has proliferated in recent years is that of assessing the environment through the pooled perceptions of members of the particular setting (e.g., Moos, 1974; Stern, 1970). While individuals do

The intent of this paper is to present a representative, though not exhaustive, overview of the current literature on social networks, with an emphasis on research linking social networks to psychological adaptation. This overview includes a review of social network concepts; and analysis of the multiple determinants of social networks; an analysis of the varied effects of social networks; and the implications for policies and practices of community mental health centers. This paper adopts the view that the concept of social network is a useful tool in examining both the functional and the dysfunctional influences of one's primary group on individual adaption.

The relationship between perceived self-environment similarity and satisfaction with the environment was tested in two differing kinds of organizational structures. It was hypothesized that the perceived similarity-satisfaction relationship was mediated by the salience or importance of the particular reference group involved. Two kinds of public high schools—traditional and alternative—were selected as examples of organizations where the same reference groups (e.g., teachers and students) play differentially salient organizational roles. Using a semantic differential technique, 46 traditional school students and 40 alternative school students rated various reference groups and school satisfactions. Differing patterns of perceived similarity and satisfaction found in the two schools support the notion that organizational structure—as embodied in organizational roles—causes the perceived similarity-satisfaction relationship to be different in different settings. The relationship of the findings to prior research is discussed and the importance of evolving more sophisticated notions of person-environment relationships is stressed.

The relationship o f perceived environment o f the high school classroom to student satisfactions and moods was assessed in two matched samples o f 18 classrooms each. A number o f significant and replicated relationships were found between the perceived environment and various satisfactions and moods. The strongest relationships with student satisfactions and positive student mood involved those classrooms emphasizing personal relationship dimensions and clarity o f rules. The study was conceptualized and discussed in the context o f two central aspects o f community psychology." the assessment of environments and the implications o f such assessments for planning and change.

(1971). The Interaction of Achievement Motivation, Task Difficulty, and Confidence-Enhancing Information in Producing Conformity Behavior. The Journal of Social Psychology: Vol. 84, No. 2, pp. 233-242.

Correlates o f patterns o f drug use over a wide range o f variables relating to the home, the school and the adolescent's perception o f himself and others were examined in a sample o f 270 high school students. Based on both logical and empirical considerations, 5 distinct groupings o f users were derived and correlates o f use were examined in an analysis o f variance design (Grouping X Sex × Grade). Across both drug-related and non-drug-related content areas (e.g., attitudes toward education), grouping showed more significant results than grade or sex. Results further suggested that while a 5-fold grouping procedure may not be essential minimal distinctions should be made among nonusers, marijuana users, and users o f other illegal drugs.

The paper describes an attempt to change the treatment environments of a psychiatric ward in a direction more consonant with the stated preferences of the staff. The Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS), which measures ten dimensions of ward cultures, eg, Affiliation, Insight, Aggression, Clarity, and Autonomy, was used to assess the treatment environment. Patients and staff described the ward as it was (real ward) and staff also described their conceptions of an ideal ward. The results were discussed in detail with staff in change-oriented feedback sessions. Retesting indicated that there were significant changes in ward environment and that both patients and staff perceived the ward as being closer to the staff's conception of an ideal ward after feedback. Systematic feedback about how patients and staff perceived the ward environment directly facilitated staff attempts geared toward changing various aspects of the ward culture.