Lynne A. Bond

The incidence, prevalence, and severity of behavior disorders among preschool-aged children in day care.

This study examined the incidence, prevalence, and severity of 14 empirically derived externalizing (unsocialized aggressive) and internalizing (socially withdrawn) behaviors among 2- through 5-year-olds attending day care. Teacher ratings were obtained for 558 children in the incidence sample and 709 children in the expanded prevalence sample. Within each age, data were cross-tabulated by sex of child and severity of behavior, and chi-square analyses were computed. Results indicated that a substantial proportion of children in the normal preschool population exhibit relatively high severities of selected externalizing and internalizing behaviors; this proportion varied with the age of the child and the behavior rated. Preschool-aged boys were consistently rated as demonstrating greater frequencies of externalizing behaviors than preschool-aged girls. The diagnostic and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Taking Stock and Putting Stock in Primary Prevention: Characteristics of Effective Programs

We argue it is important regularly to take stock of what makes primary prevention and promotion programs in mental health effective and to use this information to guide future program design, implementation, and evaluation. Based upon a review of diverse program evaluations, including meta-analyses and best practices approaches, we identify 10 distinct (but interdependent) characteristics of effective primary prevention and promotion programs that should frame future work. We also note the importance of community-based collaboration for achieving these 10 features.

The Listening Partners Program: An Initiative Toward Feminist Community Psychology in Action

The Listening Partners intervention is described and analyzed as a synthesis of feminism and community psychology, within a developmental framework. Working from an empowerment perspective, this social action, peer group intervention supported a community of poor, rural, isolated, young, White mothers to gain a greater voice, claim the powers of their minds, and collaborate in developmental leadership—creating settings that promote their own development and that of their families, peers, and communities. High quality dialogue, individual and group narrative, and collaborative problem-solving were emphasized, in a feminist context affirming diversity, inclusiveness, strengths, social-contextual analyses, and social constructivist perspectives. The power of enacting a synergy of feminism and community psychology is highlighted.

Mothers' Beliefs about Knowledge, Child Development, and Parenting Strategies: Expanding the Goals of Parenting Programs

This study examined the relationship between mothers’ beliefs about knowledge (epistemology) and conceptions of child development and parent-child communication strategies. One hundred twenty mothers of preschool-aged children completed the Ways of Knowing measure and Parent Communication Strategies Interview; a subset of 38 also completed the Concepts of Development Questionnaire. Analyses revealed that mothers with more complex understanding of knowledge have less categorical and more multi-faceted conceptions of child development and are more likely to endorse parenting strategies that are less authoritarian and more cognitively challenging for children.Editor’s Strategic Implications: Prevention programs designed to promote constructive parenting should foster parents’ epistemological development (which guide beliefs and practices) rather than dwell on individual parent behaviors. The authors continue to develop the promising practice of tailoring interventions on the basis of parents’ personal belief systems (see also Burns & Bond, 2004).

Movers and Shakers: How and Why Women Become and Remain Engaged in Community Leadership

This research examines womens narratives regarding the experiences that lead to becoming, sustaining, and challenging active community leaders. Seventeen women neighborhood leaders, age 28 to 73 years, completed in-depth interviews. Qualitative thematic content analyses identified prominent themes in participants’ responses that were subsequently linked to a generativity framework. Analyses revealed that leaders reported circuitous rather than linear paths of emerging community participation and growing up among others who demonstrated an ethos of care in informal as well as formal community practices. Womens initial community engagement was most often in response to invitations to address community needs. Both communal and agentic rewards and challenges to community involvement were identified. Based upon the findings, strategies for promoting and sustaining womens community leadership are identified.

Sibling-created experiences: relationships to birth-spacing and infant cognitive development

Abstract This longitudinal study examined various intellectual and social experiences older siblings create for or with their infant siblings, and how these experiences relate to sibling status variables and infant cognitive level. Eleven categories of firstborn-created intellectual and social experiences were coded from free play of 69 infant-sibling dyads when infants were 12 1 2 and 17 1 2 months old. Infant cognitive level was assessed with the Bayley MDI and from the developmental level of infant solitary play. Results suggested that infants of widely spaced dyads experience a more intellectually and socially stimulating environment than infants of closely spaced dyads. No relationships were found between infant cognitive level and any firstborn-created experience or age-spacing. These results were discussed in light of additional findings relating variations in sibling age-spacing to variations in household structure in middle-class, two-parent families.

Community-Based Collaboration: An Overarching Best Practice in Prevention

Several groups of prevention scholars and practitioners have recently worked independently and simultaneously to identify and disseminate guidelines for effective prevention and health promotion, reaching remarkably similar conclusions. The authors argue that community-based collaboration is an overarching best practice in prevention because it is crucial for achieving the characteristics identified as distinguishing effective prevention. This article reviews the elements that scholars have agreed are necessary for effective prevention and summarizes the ways in which community-based collaborations contribute to each.

Building Bridges: Examining Lesbians' and Heterosexual Women's Close Friendships with Each Other

Abstract Friendships between lesbians and heterosexual women were explored using a sample of 47 mostly White women (23 lesbians and 24 heterosexual women), ages 18 to 25, that reported at least one close lesbian-heterosexual woman friendship. A majority of participants indicated that friendships between lesbians and heterosexual women had both uniquely positive and negative aspects that could be attributed to the difference in sexual identity. Positive aspects included socio-emo-tional benefits, opportunities for learning, and societal benefits. Negative aspects included anxiety about sexuality, doubts regarding mutual understanding, clashes of perspectives and experience, and societal stressors. Implications of the findings for challenging current social inequities associated with sexual identities were explored.

The Relationship Between Mothers' Beliefs About Knowledge and Their Experiences in Parent Education

The relationship between mothers’ epistemologies (beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the self as a knower) and their expected benefit from and engagement with parent education was investigated with 39 mothers enrolled in parent education classes. The study administered interviews and questionnaires preand mid-course that probed mothers’ epistemological perspectives, course expectations and engagement, and recorded observations of maternal classroom behaviors. Analyses revealed that mothers’ expectations for class format, teacher role, and benefit from, as well as engagement in parent education varied by their epistemology. Mothers with more complex epistemologies expected more discussion and interaction, demonstrated more active involvement in the classes (e.g., asking divergent questions and probing for others’ perspectives), and were reported by instructors to be more engaged in class than mothers with less complex epistemologies. Consideration of maternal epistemology should facilitate the development and implementation of more effective community parent education programs. Editors’ Strategic Implications: This article includes the following strategy that shows promise. Teachers/facilitators working with groups should attend to the learning styles or ways of knowing of students/consumers. A promising lead from the Burns & Bond research suggests that matching the teaching style with the learning style may lead to more productive learning, with the qualifier that eventually moving the consumers to a more complex style of learning will be more productive in the long run. Interview questions presented in the article may be useful to identify styles of learning; styles of teaching need to be conceptualized in parallel fashion. Teachers will have to be adaptive to use whatever range of styles

Community-Based Collaboration in Prevention and Mental Health Promotion: Benefiting from and Building the Resources of Partnership

Successful primary prevention and promotion initiatives in mental health recognize and include the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Community-based collaboration is an important strategy for achieving this balance and for facilitating the achievement of other key characteristics that are consistently associated with effective programs. We examine the powerful benefits of collaboration – described in terms of the resources contributed by each partner as well as the environment and processes created by diverse partners working together – within the context of ten characteristics of successful prevention and promotion programs. We also review some of the most common challenges to collaboration and offer recommendations for overcoming them in order to facilitate success in mental health promotion.