Edison J Trickett

University of Miami | UM · Department of Educational and Psychological Studies

Although research suggests neighborhood‐level factors influence youth well‐being, few studies include youth when creating interventions to address these factors. We describe our three‐step process of collaborating with youth in low‐income communities to develop an intervention focused on civic engagement as a means to address neighborhood‐level pro...

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 requirem...

In community interventions more generally, the concept of fidelity refers to the degree to which a program is delivered as intended. The present paper discusses ways in which fundamental aspects of participatory research challenge the concept of fidelity and differ from more traditional science-dominated approaches. We begin with a discussion of th...

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 suppo...

The concept of ecology has, over time, become increasingly important as a frame for conducting community interventions. While multiple ecological frameworks have been proposed both within and outside public health, most have drawn on Bronfenbrenner’s work and the concern with multiple levels of the ecological context. The present article presents a...

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 exist...

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 dive...

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 stu...

Assessment of the impact of varied forms of participatory research is enhanced by specific attention to the ripples, such work initiates in the social context. Ripples are defined as consequences either unintended or unanticipated by those carrying out the participatory research. Following a brief documentation of the range of reported ripples in r...

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 acculturatio...

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...

The intellectual legacy of Seymour Sarason continues to serve as a critical resource for the field of community psychology. The present paper draws on one of Sarason's favorite aphorisms and two of his seminal writings to suggest the relevance of ideas articulated 35–40 years ago for the current time. Each in their own way highlights the importance...

The study examines the effects of ethnic clusters and independent living arrangements on adaptation of elderly immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. The multigenerational living arrangements were compared with independent living in a dispersed ethnic community and in an ethnic cluster of public housing. The residents of the ethnic clusters of pu...

The intellectual legacy of Seymour Sarason continues to serve as a critical resource for the field of community psychology. The present paper draws on one of Sarason’s favorite aphorisms and two of his seminal writings to suggest the relevance of ideas articulated 35–40 years ago for the current time. Each in their own way highlights the importance...

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. A survey containing the wellness measure and several additional psychosocial variables was completed by 493 Yup...

Las personas ex-soviéticas que se exiliaron a los EE.UU. tienen una media de edad superior a la de otros grupos de inmigrantes; entre ellas, los adultos que superan los 65 años suponen un gran porcentaje de la población ruso parlante. A pesar de que se conocen los riesgos asociados con la inmigración de personas mayores, los investigadores y agente...

This paper describes the processes we engaged into develop a measurement protocol used to assess the outcomes in a community based suicide and alcohol abuse prevention project with two Alaska Native communities. While the literature on community-based participatory research (CBPR) is substantial regarding the importance of collaborations, few studi...

“Citizen participation means a horizontal, equal relationship. It means relating with the other at the same level. One understands one’s usefulness as part of the solidarity produced within the relationship. Accepting the otherness involves admitting different modes of knowing and making possible the dialogue and the relation with the other in a pl...

Health inequities persist and, in some cases, are increasing. Multilevel interventions involve efforts to change aspects of social contexts related to the creation and maintenance of health inequities among varied groups. Momentum for conducting multilevel interventions to achieve health equity is found across professional fields as well as scienti...

This contribution to the Ethics section is intended to foster discussion about the relationship between multicultural competence and ethics; a timely discussion especially in view of the release in 2011 of the American Evaluation Association's Public Statement on Cultural Competence (http://www.eval.org/ccstatement.asp). Over the course of 2011, Le...

In recent years, ecological perspectives have become more visible in prevention, health promotion, and public health within the school context. Individually based approaches to understanding and changing behavior have been increasingly challenged by these perspectives because of their appreciation for contextual influences on individual behavior. T...

The present study depicts an ecological portrait of the work lives of 16 ELL high school teachers in an urban context in the United States. Results suggest that their work lives take place within a complex school ecology which affects the kinds of activities they engage in and the opportunities they have to support their students. In this context t...

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...

Recent discussions about the conduct of community interventions suggest the importance of developing more comprehensive theorizing about their nature and effects. The present study is an effort to infer how community interventions are theorized by the way they are represented in the peer-reviewed scholarly literature. A coding of a random sample of...

Community involvement in community-wide interventions is important for a variety of scientific, ethical, and pragmatic reasons. However, the specific meaning of community involvement depends on the details of how it is enacted. Katz et al. outline an ambitious effort to blend the science of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with the processes of...

Community interventions are complex social processes that need to move beyond single interventions and outcomes at individual levels of short-term change. A scientific paradigm is emerging that supports collaborative, multilevel, culturally situated community interventions aimed at creating sustainable community-level impact. This paradigm is roote...

This chapter provides commentary on Chapters 2-4. It raises probing questions about the varied conceptualizations of empowerment applied across chapters and across types of settings, the importance of attending to "ripple" effects of setting processes and activities at multiple levels of analysis, the ecological influence of the researcher-setting...

While the concept of culture has long been central to community psychology research and intervention, it has most frequently referred to the communities in which such work occurs. The purpose of this paper is to reframe this discussion by viewing community interventions as instances of intercultural contact between the culture of science, reflected...

This introduction to a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychiatry is the result of a symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, 2006, that brought together anthropologists and psychologists involved in community based collaborative intervention studies to examine critically the assumptions, processes...

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...

The purpose of this paper is to apply an ecological perspective to the conduct of multilevel community-based culturally-situated interventions. After a discussion of the emerging consensus about the value of approaching such interventions ecologically, the paper outlines a series of questions stimulated by an ecological perspective that can guide f...

Community psychology has historically focused on understanding individual behavior in sociocultural context, assessing high-impact contexts, and working in and with communities to improve their resources and influence over their futures. This review adopts an ecological perspective on recent developments in the field, beginning with philosophy of s...

Commentary is provided on an overview of consultation guided by the ecological paradigm and four case studies of ecologically-based consultation. The case studies are used as examples in the discussion of environmental reconnaissance and the search for resources, the development of processes to mobilize and enhance resources, and the development of...

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...

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...

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 hi...

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...

During the June 2001, eighth biennial meeting of the Society for Community Research and Action in Atlanta, a wide variety of community psychologists across generations attended a tribute in honor of James Gordon Kelly. What follows is an attempt to capture the spirit of the afternoon tribute as expressed through remarks made by colleagues and readi...

While a great deal of research has been conducted to understand acculturation and its relationship to adaptation in the new country, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the ways in which the characteristics of the local community impact these processes. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the potential rol...

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...

Review of the book The Skeptical Visionary: A Seymour Sarason Educational Reader edited by Robert L. Fried(see record 2003-00564-000 ). From Sarason's voluminous writings Fried has judiciously selected 24 essays written over a 40-year period that show why Sarason has become such an intellectual treasure for the behavioral sciences. Fried prefaces e...

The concept of collaboration in community research and intervention, although not new, has grown tremendously in importance in the past 20 years. Yet, it is both a contested concept in terms of its intent and a still evolving idea in terms of its meaning and implications. The purpose of this monograph is to begin to "unpack" the collaboration const...

The concept of collaboration in community research and intervention, although not new, has grown tremendously in importance in the past 20 years. Yet, it is both a contested concept in terms of its intent and a still evolving idea in terms of its meaning and implications. The purpose of this monograph is to begin to “unpack” the collaboration const...

The paper reflects on the life experiences that influenced both my involvement in folk music and my career as a community psychologist. In particular, the role of chance, supportive adults and social settings, travel, and encounters with diversity served to turn the ongoing experience of personal and professional marginality into a resource for me...

The paper describes developments in preventive interventions in AIDS/HIV that signal the emergence of a new perspective focusing on community-level intervention and community-level impact. These developments are reviewed, and a ecological framework from community psychology is offered as an integrating and guiding mind-set for future community impa...

This study explores how acculturation is related to adaptation across different life spheres for 162 Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents in a suburban community in Maryland. Because the different contexts of refugee adolescents' lives vary in acculturative demands, different patterns of acculturation should be related to adaptation in different life...

This study explores how acculturation is related to adaptation across different life spheres for 162 Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents in a suburban community in Maryland. Because the different contexts of refugee adolescents' lives vary in acculturative demands, different patterns of acculturation should be related to adaptation in different life...

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 a...

Today I revisit a premise central to community psychology since its official inception (Bennett et al., 1966): the importance of developing theory, research, and intervention which locates individuals, social settings, and communities in sociocultural context. I return to this premise not because community psychology has not made significant substa...

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...

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...

The present study assesses the relationship of work status to acculturation and psychological adaptation among 206 refugees from the former Soviet Union who have resettled in the United States. These refugees lived in two different urban areas: the Washington, DC area and the Brighton Beach community in New York. Psychological adaptation was measur...

The present study assesses the relationship of work status to acculturation and psychological adaptation among 206 refugees from the former Soviet Union who have resettled in the United States. These refugees lived in two different urban areas: the Washington, DC area and the Brighton Beach community in New York. Psychological adaptation was measur...

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 i...

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 difficult...

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 ar...

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 confirm...

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 confirm...

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 ar...

The potential complementarity of an evolving developmental contextualist paradigm and community psychology is explored through an overview of 5 areas of research and intervention in community psychology: (a) models for understanding the social context and people in context; (b) socioculturel influences on person-environment transactions; (c) resear...

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...

Without Abstract

develop the concept of human diversity by drawing on the [perspective that emphasizes people in context] / [social and contextual] processes are understood only in relation to the contexts in which they occur / trace how organized psychology has conceptualized the notion of diversity and how that notion has changed over time / such a recounting set...

Explores the relationship between community psychology and its commitment to issues of human diversity. It is argued that the evolving conception of diversity and the emergence of contextualist/constructionist philosophies of science provide an opportunity to integrate human diversity into research and practice in community psychology. The history...

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 sch...

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 ye...

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 w...

This article presents an ecological perspective on homelessness that emphasizes the context in which homeless people live and the complex interactions between personal, social, economic, and service system resources that affect their well-being. The ecological perspective encourages researchers and program developers to assess the problems of homel...

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 pro...

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...

This book is about the creation and 14 year evolution of a public alternative inner-city high school—New Haven, CT's High School in the Community (HSC). This school lived an idea—empowerment. Students were encouraged to participate in shaping many aspects of their education, teachers were responsible for running the school, and parents invited to h...

Suggests reasons why growth in the field of primary prevention has not been accompanied by 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 underlying different approaches to primary prevention. A heuristic for examining ethica...

Explored differences in environmental characteristics between classrooms for adolescents identified as behaviorally disordered and traditional secondary school classrooms. Using the Classroom Environment Scale and a measure of school satisfaction, 38 classrooms in 6 special schools were compared to 22 normal classrooms. While some homogeneity exist...

analyze the components and influences of an ecological approach to intervention in the schools / consider new goals and assumptions about community research to illustrate how an ecological perspective can guide preventive interventions, Trickett and Birman describe their collaboration with a high school in examining the ways in which an ecologica...

A prospective approach was utilized to identify personal and environmental determinants of new social networks formed by 92 college freshmen during their transition to an on-campus residential setting. Results indicate that social exploration preference (a personal coping style variable) and residence hall emphasis on exploration behavior (a social...

Empowerment is defined in terms of the extent of decision-making power that people actually wieM in an organization. The concept is developed through an analysis of the participative decision-making of the Policy Council or governing body o fan alternative public school, on which parents, students, and teachers were equally represented. The council...

The 1-year impact of attending a public alternative high school on two cohorts of adolescents who gained entrance to the school through a lottery was studied. Adolescents who had applied to the school but were not selected in the lottery served as a control group. The nature of the alternative high school environment is described, and the outcome o...

In conclusion, I have attempted today to cast the current status of the field of community psychology within the framework of partial paradigm acquisition—to slightly revise Ray Lorion's phrase, of promises kept, and promises still to keep—and have outlined one fledgling perspective which, I hope, will stimulate discussion and debate about the fiel...

Community psychology programs are themselves living examples of interventions in social settings-primarily the university. As such, an understanding of their development, their institutional constraints, and their future hopes can constitute a central experimental education for faculty and students alike. The purpose of this paper is primarily para...

Suggests that the article by M. E. Bernal and A. M. Padilla (see record 1983-06520-001) is a useful reminder of the discrepancy between the American Psychological Association's (APA's) commitment to training clinical psychologists sensitive to the entire range of human diversity and the way in which clinical programs are structured and accredited....

Assessed the normative environments of 15 representative single-sex and coeducational independent schools in the US, using the Classroom Environment Scale and Student Experience Questionnaire. Data gathered in 78 classrooms and from a stratified random sample of 456 10th and 12th graders showed that the environments of these 2 types of independent...