Better Together: Expanding Rural Partnerships to Support Families

Chronic shortages of health, social service, and mental health professionals in rural areas necessitate creative partnerships in support of families. Cooperative extension professionals in Family and Consumer Sciences and community health nurses are introduced as trusted professionals in rural communities who can bring critical skills to human services teams. Multidisciplinary prevention programs offer particularly good contexts for county extension educators and community health nurses to work in collaboration with social workers. The case of grandparents raising grandchildren illustrates the critical roles that can be filled by professionals in these two fields to extend the reach of family support programs

Theory and Practice in Participatory Research: Lessons from the Native Elder Care Study

Models for community-based participatory research (CBPR) urge academic investigators to collaborate with communities to identify and pursue research questions, processes, and outcomes valuable to both partners. The tribal participatory research (TPR) conceptual model suggests modifications to CBPR to fit the special needs of American Indian communities. This paper draws upon authors’ collaboration with one American Indian tribe to recommend theoretical revision and practical strategies for conducting gerontological research in tribal communities. We rated the TPR model as a strong, specialized adaptation of participatory research principles. Although the need for some TPR mechanisms may vary, our experience recommends incorporating dissemination as a central TPR mechanism. Researchers and communities can expect well-crafted collaborative projects to generate particular types of positive project outcomes for both partners, but should prepare for both predictable and unique challenges

Neighborhood Characteristics, Parenting, and Children’s Safety

neighborhood, children, families, safety, well-being, measurement,

Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire: A review of Reliability and Validity

Increasing interest in measuring parenting styles, especially with the Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire, has emerged in the last 17 years. However, a critical review of studies using this instrument to assess parenting styles has not been done. The present article proposes an extensive review of studies that applied the instrument, focusing in particular on the different uses of the scale, its psychometric properties, and its association with other constructs. A discussion about the applicability, measurement reliability and validity of the instrument is provided