Objective: Military veterans are more likely than civilians to experience trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research suggests, however, that some people who experience trauma, including veterans, report posttraumatic growth (PTG), or positive personal changes following adversity. In this study, we tested a comprehensive model of PTG, PTSD, and satisfaction with life in a veteran population, exploring the roles of challenges to core beliefs, types of rumination, sex, and time since event. Method: Data were collected via Amazon's Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing website, from veterans (N = 197) who had experienced a stressful event within the last 3 years (M = 16.66 months, SD = 12.27 months). Structural equation modeling was used to test an integrated conceptual model of PTG, PTSD, and satisfaction with life. Results: Results showed that challenge to core beliefs was directly associated with both deliberate and intrusive rumination. Deliberate rumination was positively related to PTG; intrusive rumination was positively related to symptoms of PTSD. PTG and PTSD, in turn, mediated the relationship between rumination styles and satisfaction with life; PTG was related to higher satisfaction with life; and PTSD was negatively related to satisfaction with life. Results failed to show differences on any model variables as a function of time since event or sex. Conclusion: Results indicate that the intentional facilitation of PTG may be a complementary and alternative option to the reduction of PTSD symptoms for improving satisfaction with life. Findings suggest that efforts to facilitate PTG should be focused on strategies for promoting deliberate rumination. What is the public significance of this article? We found strong support in our study for a comprehensive model of posttraumatic growth, or perceived positive psychological changes following adversity, in a sample of military veterans. Results highlight the importance of purposefully thinking about the adverse experience to make meaning from it and grow. The intentional facilitation of posttraumatic growth may offer a complementary and alternative option to treating posttraumatic stress symptoms to increase overall well-being.

Ex-offenders face barriers to community reintegration including negative attitudes held by members of the public. This meta-analysis summarizes the extant research on the correlates of public attitudes toward ex-offendersnamely, public, ex-offender, and community characteristicsand the moderating effects of sexual offense history. A systematic search of four databases (PsycINFO, Web of Science, National Criminal Justice Reference Service [NCJRS], and ProQuest Dissertation & Theses) identified 19 records, consisting of 9,355 participants. Results revealed small associations between correlate variables and attitudes, suggesting that people are more similar than different in their attitudes toward ex-offenders. Indeed, only political ideology, interpersonal contact, and sexual offense history emerged as significant correlates. Moderation analyses revealed differences in public attitudes toward ex-offenders based upon the year a record was produced. Findings reveal the need for additional research examining moderators of public attitudes toward ex-offenders and suggest that interventions should explore ways to incorporate interpersonal contact and reduce stigma related to criminal histories.

Driver, vehicle, public road, and farm enterprise characteristics were examined for their combined association with farm vehicle public road crash group membership. North Carolina farms experiencing a public road crash from 1992 to 2003 (n = 200) were compared with a non-crash control group (n = 185) for a 1:1 case:control ratio. Five characteristics were associated with increased odds of crash group membership in the combined model (likelihood ratio = 175.95; d.f. = 15; p < .001): use of non-English speaking drivers (OR = 3.71); use of non-family hired help drivers (OR = 4.25); types of non-farm vehicle public road use (OR = 1.39); farm injury history (OR = 1.33); and, use of younger farm vehicle drivers (OR = 1.02). Farms reporting older farm vehicle drivers (OR = 0.97), and low farm income (OR = 0.29) were less likely crash group members. Recommendations are discussed for incorporating findings into farm vehicle crash prevention research and interventions.

Unsafe food handling practices in food service establishments are a major contributor to the transmission of food-borne illness. However, current worker education and training interventions demonstrate only modest success in changing food service worker behavior. We argue for more ecologically-oriented interventions that address both individual and contextual factors that influence safe food handling behaviors. We describe potential predisposing influences (e.g. knowledge, beliefs concerning risk of food-borne illness, perceived control, self-efficacy), enabling influences (e.g. intensity and quality of training, work pressure and pace, safety procedures and protocols, appropriate equipment) and reinforcing influences (e.g. management enforcement of policies, incentives for safe food handling, job stress and organizational justice) on worker behavior. Efforts to change food service workers' behaviors are more likely to be effective if they pay greater attention to the ecological context, address multiple influences on worker behavior, and view workers as partners in preventing food-borne illness in food service establishments.

Nutritional well-being among older adults is critical for maintaining health, increasing longevity, and decreasingthe impactofchronicillness. However, few well-controlledstudies have examinednutritionalbehav ior change among low-income older adults. A prospective, controlled, randomized design examined a fivesession nutrition education module delivered to limited-resource older adults ( N = 703) in Congregate Nutrition sites by Cooperative Extensionagents. Experimentalgroupparticipantswere significantly more likely than con trol groupparticipants to increase multivitamin use, to increase calcium supplementuse, to read labels of dietary supplements, to carry a supplement and/or medication list, and to discuss such use with their health care profes sional. The study addresses weaknesses in the literature by using a theoretically derived education component, implementing the intervention within a setting regularly used by low-income older adults, employing random ized assignment to intervention and control conditions, and using hierarchical linear modeling to deal with “nested” data.

Elements of a “pluralized” drug policy have been emerging in the United States that attempt to augment punishment with an emphasis on enhanced public health and therapeutic measures. While much of this reform involves compulsory treatment diversion, a “middle ground” to reform has involved the use of pre-arrest/booking strategies in support of harm reduction policies and noncompulsory treatment diversion. In this examination of the cities of Baltimore and San Francisco, we argue that such strategies have proven problematic because of the contradictions inherent in pluralized drug control models that attempt to reconcile abstinence and prohibitions against drug use with tolerance and outreach. We identify two primary factors contributing to these contradictions. The first is an emphasis on compulsory treatment diversion mechanisms in the United States, and in the obverse, disagreements over the wisdom of harm reduction in drug policy reform. The second are limitations on the policing role in social outreach, or what we call here “reintegrative” community policing, involving both organizational factors on the part of law enforcement and resistance from community activists and public health agencies.

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.

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.

THE OFFICER AS COMMUNITY-BUILDER IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR THEMES OF THE community policing movement. It is based on the assumption that the officer can act as an organizer who works to mobilize the capital of a neighborhood to prevent social disorder and thereby crime (Pint, 2001; Sampson, 1999; Lyons, 1999; Crank, 1994). Nevertheless, the community-building process is a tall order for the police, both politically and bureaucratically. A traditionally insulated service sector that is often an object of controversy in its own right, a community-building orientation requires law enforcement to forge partnerships with a wide variety of community-based and other government organizations, as well as to engage in social outreach (Thracher, 2001; Kleinenberg, 2001). In this context, community policing assumes that the police will restrain their reactive, crime-fighting orientation to create room for more collaborative and innovative crime prevention and strategies (Bureau of Justice, 1994: 17). Whether the police are willing and able to live up to these reforms, and how they problem-solve, are matters open to question (Skogan and Hartnett, 1997; Maguire, 1997). Different methods of community policing imply different ideas about community-building, although they all grow out of a common philosophical assumption that social disorganization leads to crime and must be minimized. Here we limit our discussion of the community-building concept to understanding the ways in which different policing practices and crime prevention partnerships work to include or exclude socially marginal populations. For example, the most common police response to their community-building role has been to intensify and broaden their preexisting order-maintenance function. One approach, aggressive order is philosophically rooted in Wilson and Kelling's (1982) now classic piece on as a metaphor for the association between physical disorder, social disorganization, and crime (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 158). Aggressive order maintenance involves arrests, field interrogations, and stops and frisks as methods to suppress minor crimes and untended behaviors, such as public intoxication and panhandling, with the intention of preventing larger problems of crime and disorder (Ibid.; Crank, 1994: 343; Harcourt, 2001: 173). One consequence of this approach is the increased regulation of disreputable or obstreperous persons such as panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed, because they are viewed as a threat to community organization and stability (Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 30; Crank, 1994). A second approach, problem-oriented policing, is analogous to broken windows theory in that it frequently targets and social disorder because it is believed that these conditions give rise to crime (Goldstein, 1990). This model advocates more indirect approaches to control, avoiding the use of arrests and the targeting of specific groups when possible, and instead focuses on ecological solutions. Grime-fighting and nuisance abatement campaigns that work to remove the environmental cues believed to attract crime, such as unkempt lots or abandoned cars, are popular problem-solving strategies (Taylor, 2001: 5; Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999: 605). The police may also work with code enforcement agencies to demolish or rehabilitate properties suspected of harboring drug traffickers (Eck, 1990; Eck and Spelman, 1987). Whatever the method, order maintenance policing is seen as a community-building tool because it is said to reduce the fear and actual incidence of crime and to reinforce law-abiding and conventional norms (Sykes, 1986). Much has been written on the successes of community policing in the United States as it pertains to order maintenance, particularly when initiatives are organized around the enhanced regulation of public space (e. …

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: ( I) 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.

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.

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. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Latino youth in urban centers, and more specifically those in families dealing with the challenges of recent immigration to the United States, have special sources of risk for substance abuse and related problems. Project HOPE focused on such a group: Latino seventh and eighth graders in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at middle school sites with particularly high concentrations of Latino youth. The overriding goals of the project were: (a) to increase protective factors at the individual, family and school level that are likely to lead to reduced abuse of alcohol and other drugs; and (2) to produce actual reductions in rates of use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana. This report describes the results from the third year of this project.

Use of community coalitions as a strategy for the primary prevention of tobacco, alcohol, and other drug abuse is justified in part on the prospect that these coalitions will mount comprehensive, multi-level, multi-target intervention packages. To judge the success of such coalitions, reliable and valid means for assessing the content and pattern of their overall prevention efforts are required. This article proposes a typology of prevention activities, discusses the logic on which it is based, and provides examples of useful applications in examining community coalition prevention plans. Evidence for reliability and validity is provided through assessments of inter-rater agreement, and the relation of measures of “scope of prevention activities” to independent ratings of comprehensiveness. The typology can be used in research validating the logic model on which prevention coalitions are based, and it is also demonstrably useful for improving the local planning process.

Community coalitions address a wide variety of community problems, espousing a community development processes that promotes individual and collective self-determination. They offer a promising venue for the study of empowerment of individuals and organizations. This study utilizes data from members of 35 community coalitions organized for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems to address the following questions: What individual characteristics are related to the psychological empowerment of coalition members? What organizational characteristics are related to the collective empowering of members? What organization characteristics are related to a coalition being organizationally empowered to succeed in achieving its objectives? At the individual level, psychological empowerment was most strongly related to individuals' participation levels, sense of community, and perceptions of a positive organizational climate. At the group level, the strongest predictors of collective empowering (our operationalization of the empowering organization) were net benefits of participation, commitment, and positive organization climate. Psychological empowerment and positive organizational climate were the two predictors of organizational effectiveness (the empowered organization). Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.

Community coalitions address a wide variety of community problems, espousing a community development processes that promotes individual and collective self-determination. They offer a promising venue for the study of empowerment of individuals and organizations. This study utilizes data from members of 35 community coalitions organized for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems to address the following questions: What individual characteristics are related to the psychological empowerment of coalition members? What organizational characteristics are related to the collective empowering of members? What organization characteristics are related to a coalition being organizationally empowered to succeed in achieving its objectives? At the individual level, psychological empowerment was most strongly related to individuals' participation levels, sense of community, and perceptions of a positive organizational climate. At the group level, the strongest predictors of collective empowering (our operationalization of the empowering organization) were net benefits of participation, commitment, and positive organization climate. Psychological empowerment and positive organizational climate were the two predictors of organizational effectiveness (the empowered organization). Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.