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Chapter 4.1
OUTLINE
❑ Define Community Psychology
❑ Structural Change
▪ First-Order vs. Second-Order Change
❑ Ecological Levels of Analysis
❑ Core Values of Community Psychology
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Defining Community Psychology
❑ Psychology
▪ Traditionally focused on the individual or the influence of the
immediate family on those aspects of the individual.
❑ Community
▪ some groupings of individuals, either through shared
endeavors, shared locality, or some other type of linkage
❑ Community Psychology
▪ It focuses on how those community-level forces impact the
functioning of all individuals and families in the community.
Community Psychology:
A Shift in Perspective
▪ Shift from focusing only on individuals to considering
how individuals, communities, and societies are
intertwined.
Society
Community
Individual
Individual
Individualistic
vs. Ecological/Structural
Perspective
Perspective
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Community Psychology:
A Shift in Perspective
❑ Individualistic Perspective
▪ People become homeless because of some individual-level
factor (e.g. mental illness).
❑ Structural/Ecological Perspective
▪ People become homeless because of the context (e.g. lack of
affordable housing).
❖This shift gives us more capacity to create change.
Structural Perspectives
❑ First-Order Change
➢ alters, rearranges, or replaces the individual members of a
group
▪ providing job training for homeless individuals
❑ Second-Order Change
➢ affects the relationships among community members,
especially shared goals, roles, rules, and power relationships.
▪ Influencing policy to provide funding for affordable housing
units.
▪ Changing norms of how the “homed” interact with the
“homeless”.
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Levels of Analysis
MACROSYSTEMS
Cultures Societies
Government Social Movements Corporations
Mass Media Belief Systems
LOCALITIES
Neighborhood Cities
Towns Rural Areas
INDIVIDUALS
MICROSYSTEMS ORGANIZATIONS
Families Schools
Local Business or Labor Groups
Friends
Religious Congregations
Classroom Community Coalitions
Work Group
Levels of Analysis
❑ INDIVIDUALS
▪ Skills and capacities of
individuals.
▪ Interventions can build
individual capacity to
address problems.
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Levels of Analysis
❑ MICROSYSTEMS
▪ Settings where a person
repeatedly engages in
direct, personal interaction.
▪ Potential sources of support
or stress.
▪ Settings with informal rules.
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Levels of Analysis
❑ ORGANIZATIONS
▪ Settings that have formal
structure.
▪ May host several
microsystems.
▪ Can have power dynamics
and informal culture.
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Levels of Analysis
❑ LOCALITIES
▪ Geographic communities
▪ Consists of many
microsystems and
organizations.
▪ History and culture are
important.
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Levels of Analysis
❑ MACROSYSTEMS
▪ Influence other levels of
analysis through policies,
legislation, social norms,
etc.
▪ Influences all other systems.
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Ecological Levels of Analysis
▪ Shows multiple causes and multiple solutions to
problems.
▪ Describes interactions between individuals and
the multiple social systems.
➢ Proximal (inner) systems are nested within distal (outer)
structures.
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Core Values
1. Individual and Family Wellness
2. Sense of Community
3. Respect for Human Diversity
4. Social Justice
5. Empowerment and Citizen Participation
6. Collaboration and Community Strengths
7. Empirical Grounding
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Core Values
1. Individual and Family Wellness
▪ Wellness
➢ Physical and Psychological health, including personal
well-being and attainment of personal goals.
▪ Collective wellness
➢ Health and wellness of communities and societies.
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Core Values
2. Sense of Community
▪ It refers to a perception of belongingness,
interdependence, and mutual commitment that links
individuals in a collective unity.
▪ Not always positive.
➢ “insiders” vs. “outsiders” dynamic
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Core Values
3. Respect for Human Diversity
▪ Recognizes and values the diversity of community
members based on race, sexual identity, etc.
▪ Required for understanding individuals-in-context.
▪ Community work requires:
➢ Appreciating community strengths and resources.
➢ Using culturally-anchored research methods.
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Core Values
4. Social Justice
▪ Fair, equitable allocation of resources, opportunities
and power in a society.
A. Distributive justice
➢ Fair allocation of resources.
B. Procedural justice
➢ Whether processes of collective decision-making
include a fair representation of citizens.
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Core Values
5. Empowerment and Citizen Participation
▪ Empowerment
➢ Enhancing opportunities for people to control their own
lives, both individually and collectively.
▪ Citizen participation
➢ Democratic decision-making processes allowing all
members of a community to contribute.
▪ Related to procedural justice.
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Core Values
6. Collaboration and Community Strengths
▪ Establish collaborative relationships with
communities
➢ Avoid typical role of expert (psychologists) and
layperson (community member).
▪ Focus on individual and community strengths
➢ instead of focusing on problems.
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Core Values
7. Empirical Grounding
▪ Integration of research into community action.
➢ Makes community action more effective and valid.
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Values in Context
▪ Core values must be understood in terms of how
they complement, balance, and limit each other in
practice.
▪ Requires accommodations among values rather
than single-minded pursuit of one or two.
▪ Value meanings may vary between people,
communities and contexts.
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