
Douglas D. PerkinsVanderbilt University | Vander Bilt · Department of Human and Organizational Development
Douglas D. Perkins
Ph.D.
About
140
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Introduction
Douglas D. Perkins teaches in the Graduate Programs in Community Research & Action and Community Development & Action, and directs the undergraduate honors program in the Dept. of Human & Organizational Development, Peabody College of Education & Human Development, Vanderbilt University. Doug does qualitative & quantitative research in Community Psychology, Applied Social and Environmental Psychology & Urban Policy. His main current project is 'Global Development of Applied Community Studies.'
Additional affiliations
August 1989 - August 2000
Education
September 1981 - August 1989
September 1976 - May 1980
Publications
Publications (140)
Using a mixed-method analysis, we propose and test a framework for predicting the international development of community psychology (CP) and community development (CD) as two examples of applied community-based research (CBR) disciplines aiming to link local knowledge generation with social change. Multiple regressions on an international sample of...
The Global Community Studies Project is an ambitious analysis of the development in 105 countries of 12 applied social research disciplines, including community-focused psychology, sociology and social work. Results include that these professional fields and indigenous training resources are lacking or weakest in the countries where they are most n...
What influences the strength of community psychology as an academic and professional field in countries receiving foreign aid? What impact does aid itself have? While capacity development is a major focus for donor countries and other international development agencies, there has been no empirical study of the relationship of aid to the strength of...
Data on 105 countries from the Global Development of Applied Community Studies project and a geographic information system (ArcGIS) were used to map and identify spatial patterns in the international growth of community psychology, as measured by professional associations and conferences, graduate and undergraduate programs and courses, and publica...
This project examines the connections between community psychology and faith-based community development. We investigate whether and how 4 major principles of community psychology-neighboring, sense of community, empowerment, and citizen participation-are found in the theory and philosophy of practice of the Christian Community Development Associat...
The quality and access to healthcare systems depend on community health resources, infrastructure, and funding; however, a significant disparity in these resources persists globally. The effectiveness of national health systems depends on a balanced approach to health spending, access to facilities and a skilled local health workforce. What account...
In light of rapid global urbanization and development, planners have become more concerned with the quality of life in cities. However, the perceptual connections between the built environment and resident well-being deserve more systematic attention. This study investigates the relationship between the perceived physical and social features of the...
Child and adolescent participation for health promotion can be realized through participatory action research (PAR). However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the concrete steps needed to actualize empowerment within PAR. We propose a framework that outlines six elements that need to be considered when designing a PAR study that strives t...
This commentary presents a virtual special issue on the global growth of community psychology (CP), particularly, but not exclusively, as reflected in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP). CP exists in at least 50 countries all over the world, in many of those for over 25 years. Yet, aside from several early Israeli articles, AJCP ra...
This longitudinal study identifies espoused change orientations and actual youth violence prevention (YVP) practices over five years by 99 public and nonprofit organizations in one city. Annual key informant interviews provided both qualitative and quantitative data, including organizational collaborative network data. Data were also obtained on pa...
The COVID-19 global pandemic requires, not only an adequate supply of, but public adherence to safe and effective vaccinations. This study analyzes the human and economic resources and political and public attitudinal factors that influence widely varying country-level coronavirus vaccination rates. Using data on up to 95 countries, we found that c...
The COVID-19 global pandemic necessitated adequate compliance to safe and effective vaccinations developed against the disease. Vaccination reduces high infection, morbidity, and mortality rates, develops herd immunity, and alleviates overburdened healthcare systems and massive economic costs. COVID-19 also raised awareness about the importance of...
We define community education as organized lifelong learning through voluntary participation in collective efforts to critically address both individual and community needs. Community education has roots in European folk schools, United States participatory democracy, and Latin American "popular education." Community education developed more recent...
Open access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.745818/full
We propose and test a new model for predicting multiple quantitative measures of well-being globally at the country level based on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), income inequality (Net Gini), and National Happiness Index (NHI; U.N. Sustainable Devel...
Community Psychology (CP) started late in China, but has developed rapidly in recent years. In its early stages, Chinese CP absorbed concepts, theories and experience from Western CP. Chinese psychologists then carried out an innovation and a theoretical reconstruction. Chinese CP has now been “Sinicized,” or formally established on its own Chinese...
For TCP readers unfortunate enough to have missed the seventh International Conference on Community Psychology in October, 2018, in Santiago, Chile, or even those who attended but missed any of the featured presentations, a new collection of papers based on those presentations was just published in November and can be read for free online at
https:...
In this paper, I will provide a brief history of community psychologists’ involvement in public policy in the u.s. and will briefly describe my own personal history and engagement with policy work as an example. The focus of the rest of the paper will be on some of the ways community psychologists are trained and work in the U.S. in the policy aren...
Place attachment is an important motivation to spend time in one’s neighborhood, talking to neighbors sociably or about local issues, and rather than flee, to stay and fight—i.e., to create social capital and participate in collective efforts to preserve or improve the community. Those efforts are often in response to some perceived threat to resid...
The mission of SCRA’s International Committee is “to support and promote communication and interaction among community psychologists and practitioners from all nations, facilitate the dissemination of research and programs developed outside the United States, and foster involvement of community psychologists from around the world in SCRA” (SCRA27.o...
Many urban school districts have been beset by a variety of problems including low achievement, high dropout, and disciplinary referral rates. Frequently, efforts to improve urban education are focused on interventions at the student, school, or district level. However, urban scholars recognize that many of these problems are embedded in urban pove...
Research in the United States has shown that youth mentoring is a promising strategy for increasing self-esteem and school connectedness in at-risk youth. There has been little confirmation of those findings internationally. The current study evaluates the impact of mentoring by trained university students on children’s self-esteem and school conne...
Douglas Perkins is recognized worldwide for his work in Community Psychology, social capital development, citizen participation, empowerment and sense of community. He is the
founding director of the PhD Program in Community Research and Action in the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as ass...
http://www.sjfzjy.com/BookDetail.aspx?Id=1005
We are delighted to share Principles of Community Psychology: Perspectives and Applications with Chinese scholars, professors, and students. The field of community psychology has steadily spread throughout the world for over 50 years (Perkins, 2009) and it is right and important that China, representin...
Although risk-taking has been found to be associated with economic deprivation, there is little evidence on whether the relationship between individual deprivation and propensity for risk-taking is inherent to all individuals , or varies across cultural contexts. Consequently, the present study investigated the interaction effects of macroeconomic...
This chapter synthesizes interdisciplinary critiques of participatory development and neighborhood engagement. Such critical study urges that community development and participatory interventions be rigorously connected to historically-embedded, local and global systems and structures of political, economic, and social power. We first interrogate n...
Journal: 当代继续教育 / Contemporary Continuing Education, 35 (199), 4-9 ( 1. 华东师范大学,上海, 200062; 2. 范德堡大学,美国田纳西州, 37203)
摘要: 结合中美成人教育学研究生专业建设在教育层次、组织和专业建设研究上的基本情况,对以社区成 人教育学位论文为代表的专业教育产出进行内容分析,结果表明,两国社区成人教育学位论文在研究主题、研 究方法、学科归属、学位和年份上均具有十分显著的差异。展望中国大陆成人教育学研究生专业建设的发展态势,包括成人教育学专业在学位类型与学位点数量上具有较大发展空间,成人教育学跨学科研究亟待加强,成人教育学专业建设研究有待强化。关键词: 成人教育学; 专业建设; 社区教育; 学位论...
http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/collaborations/vol1/iss1/3/
We present the Field School model of intercultural civic education, service-learning, action research training,
and collaboration (with local academic and community partners) based on field work in applied
anthropology. Theoretical and methodological foundations of the Field School a...
Introduction: Epistemology and Ontology of Community Psychology
Community psychology has emerged internationally over the past fifty or more years, for varying purposes and in unique social, political, and cultural circumstances. Community psychology may be defined most simply as the applied study of the relationship between social systems and indi...
Community education in the United States has its origins in the community school movement in 1930s. The evolution of American community education is reflected in three phenomena: the popularization and diversification of community education practices, the progress of information sharing, theoretical construction and human capacity building in commu...
This chapter, coauthored by a community psychologist and an anthropologist who has contributed to community psychology, reviews the relevance of other disciplines to our field and why transdisciplinary work is critical in moving community psychology closer to its fundamental mission: reducing the social, structural and psychological factors that pr...
English full text available after article 59 at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/perkins/publications/
Magvanjav, O., Perkins, D.D. Lilienthal, G., Kopsombut, U., Zhou, L., Bai, J., & Zhang, Y. (2016). 看护者教育水平与目前饮食方式对学前儿童缺铁的影响 (Iron deficiency among Chinese preschool children: Caregivers’ education and present dietary differences by diagnosis). 中国学校卫生...
We introduce a special issue on public policy research, advocacy, and training by community psychologists that grew out of the Fifth International Community Psychology Conference held in Fortaleza, Brazil. Two papers from Portugal propose changes in sex education policies in schools and communities to promote adolescents' rights and drug abuse poli...
Interest in social policy work has been on the rise in the Society for Community Research
and Action (SCRA). SCRA’s Public Policy Committee aims to affect local, state, and
national policy on topics relevant to community psychology through advocacy,
collaboration, and capacity building. To communicate SCRA’s perspective on pressing
social issues, t...
The HOD field school is an experiential learning program designed to promote the development of university students and community partners as they work together toward integrating research and action around social justice issues through community-based participatory methods. In this chapter, we describe the theoretical foundations and history of th...
Data monitoring is a key recommendation of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, a global framework adopted in May 2010 to address health workforce retention in resource-limited countries and the ethics of international migration. Using data on African-born and African-educated physicians in the 2013...
The findings on the association between Social Networking Sites and civic engagement are mixed. The present study aims to evaluate a theoretical model linking the informational use of Internet-based social media (specifically, Facebook) with civic competencies and intentions for future civic engagement, taking into account the mediating role of civ...
Local environmental grassroots activism is robust and globally ubiquitous despite the ebbs and flows of the general environmental movement. In this review we synthesize social movement, environmental politics, and environmental psychology literatures to answer the following questions: How does the environment emerge as a topic for community action...
The present study compared immigrant and Italian native adolescents with regard to drug use. Additionally, we analysed the role of family and peer risk and protective factors for drug use. Participants included 2533 Italian native and immigrant adolescents (mean age = 17.19, SD = 1.6; 66.7% male). Results showed that immigrant adolescents reported...
Background: Nashville’s Jefferson Street corridor, a once thriving neighborhood business district waylaid by urban renewal and desegregation in the mid-20th century, has, in recent years, become the focus of strategic planning by local organizations - including the Metropolitan Nashville Planning Department, and Jefferson Street United Merchants Pa...
Synopsis This report on equitable development was commissioned by NashvilleNext in response to the concern of affordable housing and gentrification to Nashvillians. A Community Conversation on this topic was held June 30, 2014 and was attended by over 300 persons; an indication of the importance of this study to the future of Nashville. In addition...
The adoption of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel in May, 2010, ostensibly heralded a new era of accountability in the migration of health-care workers.1 Global health advocates lauded its unanimous adoption by all 193 WHO member states convening at the 63rd World Health Assembly as a sign of chang...
Place attachment (PA) is a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary concept focused at different levels with many definitions. Most view it as both positive and powerful. To humanistic geographers, people’s bonding with meaningful spaces represents a universal connection that fulfills fundamental human needs (Relph, 1976). To community psychologists and s...
Defensible space theory asserts that the design of physical space influences the way that both residents of an area and outsiders interact with that space, especially in urban areas. A space within or outside of a building is considered defensible space when the residents or occupants of the building are able to extend their personal control into t...
Place attachment (PA) is a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary concept focused at different levels with many definitions. Most view it as both positive and powerful. To humanistic geographers, people’s bonding with meaningful spaces represents a universal connection that fulfills fundamental human needs (Relph, 1976). To community psychologists and s...
Problem: The New Urbanism, or neotraditional design, movement has fueled new forms of neighborhood planning, design and development whose guiding principles include providing more and better local amenities and walkability, and increasing density and resident social interaction, particularly in front yards, porches, and sidewalks, thereby improving...
According to the norms and collective efficacy model, the levels of social connectedness within a local community are a function of neighborhood structural characteristics, such as socioeconomic status and ethnic composition. The current work aims to determine whether neighborhood structural and institutional features (neighborhood wealth, percenta...
Research on youth civic engagement focuses on individual-level predictors. We examined individual- and school-level characteristics, including family affluence, democratic school social climate and perceived neighborhood social capital, in their relation to civic engagement of 15-year-old students. Data were taken from the 2006 World Health Organiz...
This paper provides an examination of the foreclosure crisis from the perspective of community-based organizations (CBOs), aspiring low-income homeowners, and very low-income households. It looks backward to examine the long-term success of low-income homeowners who purchased a home from a CBO, comparing foreclosure outcomes with a random community...
Research on youth civic engagement focuses on individual-level predictors. We examined individual- and school-level characteristics, including family affluence, democratic school social climate and perceived neighborhood social capital, in their relation to civic engagement of 15-year-old students. Data were taken from the 2006 World Health Organiz...
This paper seeks to understand the role of the Internet and information and communications technology (ICT) in potential democratic movements. We propose an ecological model of technological development and democratization which recognizes that change can occur (1) at individual as well as social levels; (2) on a continuum from oppression to freedo...
The present study examined the link between perceived discrimination, depressive symptoms, cultural identity and social support at school reported by immigrant adolescents. Participants were 214 mostly male, immigrant adolescents in grades 9 through 13 of high schools in two small cities in northern Italy. Results showed that discrimination has a s...
Introducing the special issue on psychosocial studies of migration and community, we briefly reflect on the global increase in, and issues related to, both international and domestic migration, particularly from rural areas of less developed countries, which has fueled rapid urbanization and intercultural tensions in both post-industrial and develo...
Community coalitions are a recognized strategy for addressing pressing public health problems. Despite the promise of coalitions as an effective prevention strategy, results linking coalition efforts to positive community outcomes are mixed. To date, research has primarily focused on determining organizational attributes related to successful inter...
The present study aims to develop an integrative model that links neighborhood behavioral opportunities and social resources (neighborhood cohesion, neighborhood friendship and neighborhood attachment) to prosocial (sharing, helping, empathic) behavior in early adolescence, taking into account the potential mediating role of perceived support of fr...
Previous research indicates that communities can be engaged at various levels in research to reduce youth violence. In this paper, we argue that the method of power sharing among partners is a central factor distinguishing different levels of engagement. Using cases from the Nashville Urban Partnership Academic Center of Excellence, we identify com...
This paper explores the role of member participation in decision-making (PDM) from an organizational learning (OL) perspective. Community-based organizations (CBOs) serve as mediators between the individual and the local community, often providing the means for community member participation and benefiting organizationally from members' input. Comm...
In China, rapid development has prompted massive migration from rural to urban areas. Migrants' participation in Urban Residents Committees (URCs) and other community organizations offers opportunities for the development of social capital and democracy in contemporary China. We use 2006 survey data from a stratified convenience sample of 3,024 mig...
Transformative organizational change requires organizational learning capacity, which we define in terms of (1) internal and (2) external organizational systems alignment, and promoting a culture of learning, including (3) an emphasis on exploration and information, (4) open communication, (5) staff empowerment, and (6) support for professional dev...
L'articolo esamina gli atteggiamenti e le politiche anti-immigrati negli Stati Uniti e in Europa. Nelle comunitŕ ospitanti gli autoctoni hanno un pregiudizio verso gli immigrati con basso reddito in quanto associano la loro presenza al verificarsi di disordini sociali e questi alla percezione dell'aumento di rischio e di paura della criminalitŕ. Pu...
This study explores the relations between neighborhood social capital (neighbor support and social climate), safety concerns (fear of crime and concern for one's child), parenting (solicitation and support), and adolescent antisocial behavior in a sample of 952 parents (742 mothers) and 588 boys and 559 girls from five middle schools (sixth through...
This study examines the state of sense of community, neighboring behavior, and social capital in the People's Republic of China, and explores their ability to predict local political participation, in the form of voting in elections for Urban Resident/Rural Villager Committees. Using a nationally representative survey, rural, older and married resi...
Change and Globalization
“Change” is in the air. The recent campaign to elect Barack Obama President of the United States was explicitly about change-- big changes, not only in who can hold that most powerful position in the world, but in new ways of influencing voters and in governing, new political values, and new directions for U.S. domestic and...
Empowerment has been the subject of widespread and often thoughtful and careful theorizing, study, and application in the fields of social work, community psychology, health promotion, and organizational studies. Unfortunately, it also became an overused buzz-word in consulting, self help, and policy circles. To many, its frequently vague, meaningl...
The history of community psychology in Italy is briefly reviewed. The field has developed extensively in universities and applied settings over the past 30 years. This issue presents 5 recent examples from different regions of Italy of preventive and other community psychological intervention studies. They include an evaluation of a program to incr...
The Adolescents, Life Context, & School project was developed in a suburban, residential area of Padova, Italy, and involved three classes of 12-year-old children. Across three months, children observed, documented, and talked about their own life contexts in order to voice problems to decision makers. Both teachers and council members played key r...
The financial costs of homelessness, in terms of services and systems of care, are generally unknown which greatly hinders clear and objective consideration of policy alternatives and their cost efficiency. Costs are unknown because they are spread across many public and private agencies that do not readily share cost and budget information or do n...
In adolescence, children become increasingly independent and autonomous, and spend more time in neighborhood settings away from home. During mid-to-late adolescence, youth often become more critical about the place they live. Their attachment to home and even community may decrease as they explore and develop new attachments to other specific place...
Community organizing and participation are put in brief historical context. A comprehensive framework for analyzing and promoting community development at multiple levels. At each level, sociocultural, political, economic, and physical environmental forms of capital are considered for their interdependencies and their influence on states of oppress...
We explore the potential for rural and urban community needs assessment research in China, particularly in response to increasing rural to urban internal migration. Models for migration and community development are presented. We identify various methods that can inform social development planning, intervention, and evaluation. A collaborative comm...
Developments in International Community Psychology
Why an issue devoted to international community psychology? In some ways, such a collection is unnecessary, even for an English language readership. Professional organizations, books, chapters and articles on community psychology appeared as early as the mid-to-late-1970s in Latin America (Montero...
Community psychologists have long worked with community-based human service organizations to build participatory processes.
These efforts largely aim at building participatory practices within the current individual-wellness paradigm of human services.
To address collective wellness, human service organizations need to challenge their current parad...
This longitudinal, multimethod study uses geographical information system (GIS) software to evaluate the community-wide impact of a neighborhood revitalization project. Unsystematic visual examination and analysis of GIS maps are offered as a complementary tool to quantitative analysis and one that is much more compelling, meaningful, and effective...
I will take an historical perspective in discussing the relevance to community psychology of other social science and applied professional disciplines. I will argue for the need for community psychologists to consider, adapt, and test (1) theories and research methods from urban, rural, and community sociology, social and environmental psychology,...
Excerpts: I am most humbled by the invitation to speak at this event. Everyone knows the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which I cannot claim to have heard in person at age 5, although I grew up just a few miles from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and later did join 2 other marches on Washington. And most peopl...
Power is central to understanding bullying, yet few studies have examined relationship power differentials across adolescence. We present an ecological framework for the development of bullying and victimization in school and study their development by investigating 11, 13, and 15-year-olds' sense of empowerment in relationships with parents, frien...
The authors explore the implications of recent proposals for a focus on power and social change in community psychology research and add needed contextual and methodological specificity. An expanded model of psychopolitical validity is presented that merges Isaac Prilleltensky’s (this issue, pp. 116–136) domains, or stages of empowerment (oppressio...
The mass devastation and suffering left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the US Gulf Coast brought the intersection of media and community into sharp focus. The news media played a pivotal role in almost every aspect of the disaster and its aftermath, and was harshly criticized for its depiction of minorities and for sensationalizing a human and...
This study assessed the links between civic participation and adolescent behavior problems (bullying, physical fighting, and alcohol and tobacco use), and whether civic engagement could be a moderator of the negative effects of parent/family detachment. Participants were 7,097 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds (48.6% girls) in a region of Northern Italy....
Sense of community (SOC) is empirically “unpacked” as a multilevel construct with place and social elements. SOC has been studied primarily at the individual level despite researchers acknowledging its effects at the community level. Little attention has been given to the roles of place and place attitudes in SOC. We argue that place and social are...