Strengths Perspective in Critical Macro Practice: Tentative Guidance for Transformative Strengths-Based Policy, Organizational, and Community Practice

This chapter aims to expand both theorizing and application of strengths perspec- tive in policy, organizational, and community contexts across inter-professional settings in human services. It begins with a brief overview of the history of strengths perspective and its pivotal influence on social work, human services, community psychology, community development, and other disciples. It goes on to bring to light traditionally dominant policy, organization, and community practice foundations within interdisciplinary human service practice. By highlighting these historically situated and presently reinforced rational, bureaucratic, and linear approaches; it argues for intentional integration of strengths perspective into macro practice en- vironments. Aligned with early scholars and practitioners that use critical perspec- tives as a foundation for the development of strengths perspective, and who assert its practical efficacy in numerous direct practice settings, it affirms broadening strengths perspective to policy, organizational, and community settings. In the interest of clarity, throughout the chapter, we use the term macro practice to describe human service activities within policy, organizational, and community set- tings (Reisch, 2017). Additionally, following the lead of other scholars in establishing critical community practice (Butcher, Banks, Henderson, & Robertson, 2007; Evans, 2015), many terms we conceive, such as critical strengths-based practice, critical macro practice, critical policy practice, and critical organizational practice. These terms, defined in further sections, differentiate these approaches from their more traditional, rational, and incremental counterparts. Beginning with a brief historical overview of strengths perspective, authors define critical strengths perspective, detail essential elements of critical macro practice, and provide examples of these distinct approaches in practice. The piece offers a critical lens to frame strengths perspective in macro contexts and demonstrates ways in which it can be applied in multiple policies, community, and organizational settings. Concluding with a set of tentative guides and considerations for critical strengths-based practice, such as prefigurative practices, humanization, intersec- tionality, democratic practice, and critical consciousness; we hope it offers tools, opens dialogue among practitioners and scholars, encourages active scholarship in this area, and spurs the necessary flourishing of truly transformative critical strengths-based practice

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607.Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability

The psychological science accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

Integrating behavioral health risk assessment into centralized intake for maternal and child health services

Effectively promoting women\u27s health during and around the time of pregnancy requires early, nonstigmatizing identification and assessment of behavioral health risks (such as depression, substance use, smoking, and interpersonal violence) combined with timelylinkage to community support and specialized interventions. This article describes an integrated approach to behavioral health risk screening woven into a point of first contact with the health care delivery system: centralized intake for maternal and child health home visiting programs. Behavioral Health Integrated Centralized Intake is a social work-informed, community-designed approach to screening, brief intervention, and service linkage targeting communities at high risk for fetal and infant mortality. Women enrolled in this study were receptive to holistic risk screen in gas wellas guided referral for both home visiting support and specialized mental health interventions. Results from this multi-community study form the foundation for strengths-based, social work-informed enhancements to community health promotion programs

Using prosopography to raise the voices of those erased in social work history

In this article, we introduce prosopography, a valuable historical research method that can be used by feminist social work scholars. While feminists in various fields use this methodology to investigate background characteristics of women in history through collective studies of how they have established relationships and networks to influence change, our review of the literature suggests that it has been little used in social work. We provide a brief overview of prosopography, strengths and limitations, and an illustration of the method as enacted focusing on the roles of early feminists within the development of nonprofit human service organizations. It is our intent to demonstrate the possibilities of prosopography to identify and understand groups of women who have been erased in social work history