Roger E. Mitchell

Do parents still matter? Parent and peer influences on alcohol involvement among recent high school graduates.

This study investigated the influences of peer and parent variables on alcohol use and problems in a sample of late adolescents in the summer immediately prior to entry into college. Participants (N = 556) completed a mail survey assessing peer influences (alcohol offers, social modeling, perceived norms), parental behaviors (nurturance, monitoring), and attitudes and values (disapproval for heavy drinking, permissiveness for drinking), and alcohol use and alcohol-related consequences. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated significant associations between both peer and parental influences and alcohol involvement, and showed that parental influences moderated peer-influence-drinking behavior, such that higher levels of perceived parental involvement were associated with weaker relations between peer influences and alcohol use and problems. These findings suggest that parents continue to exert an influential role in late adolescent drinking behavior.

Coping with Domestic Violence - Social Support and Psychological Health Among Battered Women

This study suggests a conceptual framework for examining the impact of stress (i.e., level of violence), personal resources, social support, institutional responsiveness, and coping upon the psychological health (i.e., depression, mastery, and self-esteem) of battered women. Respondents were 60 women who had sought assistance from a shelter for battered women. Results indicated that increased levels of violence, minimal personal resources, lack of institutional and informal social support, and greater avoidant coping styles were related to lowered self-esteem and more severe depressive symptoms. Exploratory analyses suggested that stress (i.e., level of violence) and personal resources may have indirect effects upon functioning through their impact on coping responses and the availability of social support. In particular, women who had fewer social contacts unaccompanied by their partner were less likely to receive supportive responses from friends. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Social support and well-being: Implications for prevention programs.

A variety of prevention programs have assumed that social support has health-promotive and health-protective effects. Although numerous studies have examined the relationship between social support and well-being, the result has been a heterogeneous and complex set of findings. We seek to review and summarize this research as a data base for planning and evaluating prevention programs. To organize our review, we present a model of stress, support, and well-being which distinguishes among several mechanisms through which support may affect well-being. We consider research on each of these mechanisms: thedirect effects of support upon functioning; theindirect effects of support upon functioning through its influence on exposure to environmental stressors; and theinteractive effects of social support in buffering the individual from the maladaptive effects of stress. We then address several implications of this research that need to be considered in the process of designing and evaluating prevention programs: (a) the need to consider the varying mechanisms through which social support has its effects; (b) the need for specificity in developing preventive interventions; and (c) the need to examine relationships among stress, support, and functioning within a broader social context.

Supporting Community-Based Prevention and Health Promotion Initiatives: Developing Effective Technical Assistance Systems

As research evidence for the effectiveness of community-based prevention has mounted, so has recognition of the gap between research and community practice. As a result, state and local governments are taking a more active role in building the capacity of community-based organizations to deliver evidence-based prevention interventions. Innovations are taking place in the establishment of technical assistance or support systems to influence the prevention and health education activities of community-based organizations. Several challenges for technical assistance systems are described: (1) setting prevention priorities and allocating limited technical assistance resources, (2) balancing capacity-building versus program dissemination efforts, (3) collaborating across categorical problem areas, (4) designing technical assistance initiatives with enough “dose strength” to have an effect, (5) balancing fidelity versus adaptation in program implementation, (6) building organizational cultures that support innovation, and (7) building local evaluative capacity versus generalizable evaluation findings.

Sense of community in neighborhoods as a multi‐level construct

Sense of community is a compelling construct that allows psychologists to examine fundamental questions about how individuals are connected to and influenced by their most important social settings. This investigation uses an existing database of 2,409 residents of 21 neighborhoods in a Northeastern city to examine sense of community at the neighborhood level. The investigation used a cross-levels program to examine whether sense of community can be detected at the neighborhood level. The investigation also tested the strength of the relationship of both neighborhood-level variables (i.e., physical attributes and presence of a grassroots neighborhood association) and individual-level variables (i.e., income and education) on neighborhood-level sense of community. Residents of the same neighborhood were more similar to one another than to residents of a different neighborhood on both the neighborhood-related variables and income and education. When variance attributable to the personal resources of income and education were removed, intraclass correlations for neighborhood-related attitudes (i.e., perceptions of neighborhood climate and perceptions of the ability of neighborhood residents to influence neighborhood conditions) remained significant at an alpha level of .05. However, neighborhood-related behavior (i.e., neighboring behavior and participation in a community organization) was no more similar to residents of the same neighborhood than to residents of a different neighborhood. Neither the presence of a grassroots neighborhood association nor the physical characteristics of neighborhoods examined in the investigation were significantly correlated with a sense of community.

Predicting intermediate outcomes for prevention coalitions: a developmental perspective

Abstract Longitudinal data from 35 substance abuse prevention coalitions were used to examine whether success in addressing initial coalition developmental tasks predicted intermediate outcomes one year later. Organizational climate, member skill development and coalition linkages predicted key informants’ ratings of coalition effects on community norms, policies, and prevention resources.

Deficiencies in social support among depressed patients: antecedents or consequences of stress?

Although initial research in the stress field has treated stress and support as independent entities, more recent efforts have emphasized their interrelatedness. It has been suggested: (a) that part of the influence of stress on psychological well-being is due to the adverse impact of stressful events and strains in reducing social support; and (b) that social support can have positive, indirect effects on health by reducing the subsequent occurrence of stress. To address these issues, a two-wave, two-variable panel model was used to examine longitudinal relationships between stress and support in a sample of 233 clinically depressed iatients. The results showed that changes in levels of strain and in positive life events were significantly associated with changes in family support over the one year follow-up period. There was less evidence of an effect of social support on negative life change events, ongoing strains, or positive life change events. In addition, analyses are described which examined differences in the pattern of results as a function of: (a) the occurrence of exit or loss events; (b) the timing of events; and (c) the use of nonlinear models.

Community-Level Collaboration for Substance Abuse Prevention.

This paper reviews the literature on the roles of community-wide collaboration in substance abuse prevention. Three broad strategies through which collaboration may have its effects are identified (i.e., building community capacity, increasing service integration, and influencing policy change). Alternative theories of effects, means of measurement, and results and conclusions from studies of collaborative interventions for prevention are discussed. The strength of empirical evidence for the impact of collaboration on substance abuse outcomes varies by strategy, with more support for the logic of policy change. Additional conclusions are offered regarding when and how this approach can work, and what might be useful next steps.

Cultivating Capacity: Outcomes of a Statewide Support System for Prevention Coalitions

Abstract Although community coalitions are an increasingly popular mechanism for attempting to change community-wide health, the empirical evidence has been mixed at best. Technical Assistance (TA) efforts have emerged in greater scale in hopes of improving both programming quality as well as the coalition structures supporting such programs. However, this commitment to TA interventions has outstripped our knowledge of optimal ways to deliver such assistance, and its limitations. This study takes advantage of results from a state-wide technical assistance project that generated longitudinal data on 41 health-oriented coalitions. The following questions were addressed: What are the circumstances under which coalitions will utilize available assistance? What are the effects of technical assistance on intermediate community outcomes? The results suggested that coalitions with greater initial “capacity” used more TA. Coalitions with low utilization mentioned difficulty in identifying their TA needs as the salient reason for not pursuing these resources. Over time, there were significant positive changes in coalition effectiveness as perceived by key informants, but these were not influenced by amount of TA.

Enhancement of individual and community competence: The older adult as community worker

This paper presents an evaluation of a primary prevention program designed to enhance individual and community competence in older adult community workers and in community residents with whom they worked. A total of 22 community workers and 97 community residents participated in the study; 30 residents constituted as posttest-only control group. Pre-post changes included increased knowledge of community services among all participants, as well as increased number of community information channels and increased life satisfaction for the workers. Residents, particularly black residents, became more internal, and their increased sense of personal control was related to their increased knowledge of services. Thus, the helper-therapy principle was supported for these older adult, mostly female, community workers, and their helping role had a net empowering effect.