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Higher education institutions present unique settings in which identities and life paths are distinctively shaped. While at their best universities should serve as empowering settings that support their members to grow and develop, to raise awareness of injustice, and to catalyze change, too often systems of higher education in the United States serve to marginalize Indigenous cultures and promote assimilation to White, Euro‐American cultures. Counterspaces offer an important response, spaces developed by and for people experiencing oppression that allow for solidarity‐building, social support, healing, resource attainment, skill‐building, resistance, counter‐storytelling, and ideally, empowerment. The Alaska Native (AN) Cultural Identity Project (CIP) is based at an urban U.S.‐based university and was rolled out during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Developed from the best available scientific and practice literature, local data from AN students, and traditional wisdom from Elders, CIP incorporated storytelling, experiential learning, connection, exploration, and sharing of identity and cultural strengths with the aim of helping AN students understand who they are and who they are becoming. In all, 44 students, 5 Elders, and 3 additional staff participated in the space. In this paper, we sought to understand how CIP was experienced by these unique members who co‐created and engaged in this space through 10 focus groups with 36 of the CIP members. We found that the counterspace promoted a sense of community, served as an empowering setting, and set the stage for empowering actions and ripple effects beyond its impact on individuals. Highlights: Indigenous students may benefit from Elder‐led counterspaces in university settings.Counterspaces facilitate empowerment by being empowering settings and fostering sense of community.The structure of a counterspace is likely more important than its content or curriculum.It is possible for a counterspace to exist in a virtual, online space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black women in the United States continue to be disproportionately affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. HIV/AIDS activism among Black women for Black women may be one solution to reduce the disparate rates of HIV/AIDS among Black women. However, little is known about what processes and experiences prompt Black women to participate in HIV/AIDS activism. In this paper, I aim to identify mechanisms of empowerment for Black women to engage in HIV/AIDS activism. I draw upon empowerment theory as a theoretical framework to guide analysis of the literature and to offer a strengths‐based perspective on Black women's efforts to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. An extensive literature search was conducted to identify studies of Black women's participation in HIV/AIDS activism. The search yielded 11 studies that were included for review. Synthesis of the literature indicated the following analytic themes as mechanisms of empowerment for Black women to participate in HIV/AIDS activism: relationships and interactions with others, critical awareness, self‐reflection, and spirituality. Article limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications for social change are also discussed. Overall, findings from this study suggest that there are unique mechanisms that facilitate psychological empowerment and prompt Black women's entry into HIV/AIDS activism. Highlights: A comprehensive review of 11 articles on Black women's participation in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) activism. Explores how Black women become psychologically empowered to become HIV/AIDS activists. Many mechanisms of empowerment for Black women engaged in HIV/AIDS activism are communal. Emphasizes psychological empowerment as not only an intrapsychic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinx immigrants regularly navigate adversity and oppression through resilience and empowerment; however, little research has sought to delineate when, how, and why they may engage in either process. Through the Transtheoretical Model of Empowerment and Resilience, this paper examines how Latinx immigrants living in distinct U.S. contexts interact with their communities. Seventy‐three Latinx immigrants (ages 18 to 70, M = 40.85, SD = 13.65) participated in 12 focus groups in Albuquerque, NM; Maricopa County, AZ; Baltimore, MD; and Richmond, VA. Participants had lived in the United States for less than 1 to 39 years (M = 14.19, SD = 8.72) and had varying immigration statuses. Analyses revealed that empowerment and resilience goals diverged by individuals' beliefs in the degree to which external change was vital, possible, and theirs to attempt. Beliefs coincided with the fundamental risk posed, based on the interaction of a context's conditions with an individual's characteristics and sense of community. Results indicate that while resilience is important to navigate risky settings, it may uphold oppressive power structures because it is consistent with the status quo. Interventions to spur external change should involve empowering processes, including facilitating gains in relative privilege and fostering sense of community. Highlights: Immigrants frequently adapt to and withstand adversity and oppression through resilience processes.A belief that external change is possible, needed, and one's to undertake fosters empowerment goals.Resilience and empowerment depend on personal characteristics interacting with context to form risk.An immigrant's sense of community in their new context likely facilitates empowerment processes.Resilience in the absence of empowerment may uphold oppressive power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When White people are predominantly in power and the discipline has yet to grapple with its own involvement in oppressive and racist ideologies, the concept of empowerment has the potential of being misused, or worse, abused. This is my experience and observation within Community Psychology (CP). In this paper, I interrogate the history of CP, especially the interplay of colonized knowledge production practices and the concept of empowerment, and uncover the use and abuse of well‐meaning community psychological principles by scholars and leaders without the critical racial awareness to apply them to communities to which they do not belong. Lastly, I offer a "slash and burn" approach to starting over. Highlights: The concept of empowerment has been misused and abused to support white supremacy.Community Psych was created by White people, for White people, to indoctrinate people of Color.Community Psychology and Society for Community Research and Action has a legacy of weaponizing empowerment and defensive gaslighting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State‐sanctioned violence (SSV) has resounding effects on entire populations, and marginalized communities have long persisted in the work toward liberation despite continued SSV. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the vast scholarship on resilience and the practical challenge of sustaining and thriving in communities targeted by SSV. We use the theoretical frame of the Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (TMER) to articulate the process of resilience and the resources that support it: maintenance, efficacy, skills, knowledge, and community resources. As a practical frame, we ground our application of the model in the experiences of the first two authors in their own communities. Centering examples from the Black Lives Matter movement and the CeCe McDonald Support Committee, we use our theoretical and practical frames to explore the scholarship on resilience relevant to resisting SSV, and we identify mechanisms for supporting community stakeholders' efforts to move toward liberation from SSV. We discuss implications for future research and activism, and we include a toolkit with suggested strategies as an appendix for psychologists, activists, and community stakeholders to consider as they work to facilitate community resilience and build a society free from SSV. Highlights: Adapts findings from resilience literature to inform strategies for community resilience.Presents model for community resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned.Presents model for resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned violence.Black lives matter, Black trans lives matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together two trends in the empowerment literature-understanding empowerment in settings and understanding empowerment as relational-by examining what makes settings empowering from a social network perspective. Specifically, extending Neal and Neal's (Am J Community Psychol 48(3/4):157-167, ) conception of network power, an empowering setting is defined as one in which (1) actors have existing relationships that allow for the exchange of resources and (2) the distribution of network power among actors in the setting is roughly equal. The paper includes a description of how researchers can examine distributions of network power in settings. Next, this process is illustrated in both an abstract example and using empirical data on early adolescents' peer relationships in urban classrooms. Finally, implications for theory, methods, and intervention related to understanding empowering settings are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational empowerment is a multi-faceted concept that involves processes occurring both within and between organizations that facilitate achievement of their goals. This paper takes a closer look at three interorganizational processes that lead to empowered organizations: building alliances, getting the word out, and capturing others' attention. These processes are located within the broader nomological network of empowerment and organizational empowerment, and are linked to particular patterns of interorganizational relationships that facilitate organizations' ability to engage in them. A new network-based measure, γ-centrality, is introduced to capture the particular network structure associated with each process to be assessed. It is demonstrated first in a hypothetical organizational network, then applied to take a closer look at organizational empowerment in the context of a coordinating council composed of human service agencies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of relationships between these processes, and the potential for unintended consequences in the empowerment of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pathways and processes through which empowering community settings influence their members, the surrounding community and the larger society are examined. To generate the proposed pathways and processes, a broad range of studies of community settings were reviewed, in the domains of adult well-being, positive youth development, locality development, and social change. A set of organizational characteristics and associated processes leading to member empowerment across domains were identified, as well as three pathways through which empowering settings in each domain contribute to community betterment and positive social change. The paper concludes with an examination of the ways that community psychology and allied disciplines can help increase the number and range of empowering settings, and enhance the community and societal impact of existing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional approaches to formal youth mentoring have focused primarily on improving the lives of 'at-risk' youth through the assignment of individual mentors who are typically disconnected from youth's communities. Similarly, research in the field of formal mentoring has emphasized the dyadic relationship between the mentor and the mentee, with less attention paid to the broader relational contexts in which such relationships unfold. The current paper proposes a new framework that expands the scope of mentoring interventions to include approaches that build on and cultivate informal supports and empower youth to identify and reach out to networks of potential supportive adults, thus increasing the reach of youth mentoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and empowerment are widely employed concepts in community psychology and other social sciences. Although empowerment is more closely associated with community psychology, both concepts hone to community psychology's strengths-based values, recognizing, respecting, and promoting local capacity and positive outcomes. Both concepts also have been critiqued for lacking clear consensus regarding definition, operationalization, and measurement (Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, ; Luthar et al. in Child Dev 71(3):543-562, ). This deficiency is reflected in the wide ranging applications of each term independently, and is particularly concerning when the terms are used together or interchangeably. Theoretical work on these concepts' boundaries and interaction is lacking. This paper builds on the authors' prior work operationalizing the processes and outcomes of each concept (Brodsky et al. in Am J Community Psychol 47(3-4):217-235, ; Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, ; Cattaneo and Goodman in Psychol Violence, in press) to present a combined transconceptual model illuminating the divergence, convergence, and interactions between the two. Both resilience and empowerment are fueled by unsatisfying states, but are differentiated by, among other things, internally (resilience) versus externally (empowerment) focused change goals. Goal determinants include context, power differentials, and other risks and resources. These concepts have the potential to facilitate each other, and understanding their interaction can better inform community psychologists' work with marginalized populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latino immigrant families with children with disabilities experience multiple sources of oppression during their settlement process in the United States. Unfair social structures and dominant cultural values and norms and the way they influence the immigrants' personal life stories generate a cycle of oppression very difficult to break. This paper presents a case study of how a group of Latino parents carried out a process of liberation fueled by the generation of empowering community narratives (critical awareness leading to transformative action) that resulted from a community-university partnership. Participants initiated a process that led them to discover their own stories of oppression and create new stories; to deconstruct the dominant cultural narratives and modify existing ones; and to understand contexts for power sharing. This joint reflection and increased awareness propelled group members to take action by founding a grassroots organization to redress some of the injustices that were partly responsible for their oppression, thus generating shifts at the personal, relational, and collective levels. In light of the theory of liberation, we discuss the participants' development of critical awareness that led them to take action to address their unmet needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to calls from social scientists in the area of globalization and women's empowerment to test a model that investigates both structural and individual components of women's empowerment in the context of globalization. The investigation uses a liberation psychology framework by taking into account the effects of globalization, human rights discourse, and women's activism within social movements to identify how structural inequities may be related to empowerment. Surveys conducted in rural Nicaragua revealed that land ownership and organizational participation among women were related to more progressive gender ideology, and in turn, women's power and control within the marital relationship, individual levels of agency, and subjective well-being. The study demonstrates that psychology can bridge the theoretical arguments surrounding human rights with the practical implementation of development interventions, and provide empirical support that has yet to be demonstrated elsewhere. The findings have important implications for strategies and interventions that can improve conditions for women and contribute to the aims of social justice articulated in the Beijing Platform for Action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to inform empowerment theory and research, this paper provides a structural conception of power. First, we examine the essential features present in three dominant conceptions of power in community psychology: social power, psychopolitical power, and relational power. Next, commonalities in the key features of power identified by these conceptions are explored and pared down to yield a more parsimonious conception of power that is grounded only in the structural pattern of relationships through which resources are exchanged. Drawing on social exchange theory, we offer a method for measuring this streamlined, structural conception of power that allows for its more precise examination. Finally, we discuss the implications of a structural conception and measurement of power for targeting and facilitating empowering processes and evaluating empowered outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of member participation in decision-making (PDM) from an organizational learning (OL) perspective. Community-based organizations (CBOs) serve as mediators between the individual and the local community, often providing the means for community member participation and benefiting organizationally from members' input. Community psychologists have recognized these benefits; however, the field has paid less attention to the role participation plays in increasing CBOs' capacity to meet community needs. We present a framework for exploring how CBO contextual factors influence the use of participatory decision-making structures and practices, and how these affect OL. We then use the framework to examine PDM in qualitative case study analysis of four CBOs: a youth development organization, a faith-based social action coalition, a low-income neighborhood organization, and a large human service agency. We found that organizational form, energy, and culture each had a differential impact on participation in decision making within CBOs. We highlight how OL is constrained in CBOs and document how civic aims and voluntary membership enhanced participation and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an acculturative integration approach that stresses the contribution of liberation psychology. Immigrant integration is a challenge for receiving countries in the Western world due to the frequent asymmetrical and oppressive conditions suffered by newcomers in their new settlements. The cross-cultural perspective connects integration with psychological acculturation, emphasizing harmony between acquisitions of the new culture while maintaining cultural heritage, and creating opportunities for intergroup relationships. In turn, liberation psychology permits an understanding of the acculturative transition as an empowerment and self-construction process by which immigrants acquire a new vision of the world and of themselves, transforming both structural conditions and themselves. From this perspective we conceptualize acculturative integration as the process by which newcomers become an accepted part of the new society through a reflexive and evaluative process, changing their social references and position, rebuilding their social and personal resources, and achieving a new agency in coherence with their new challenges and goals. In this process, they acquire critical thinking about unequal conditions, gain capacities to respond to the inequalities, and take effective actions to confront them. We illustrate this process using the narratives of nine Moroccan women who are living in asymmetrical and oppressive local contexts in Andalusia, the southern-most region of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community psychologists are increasingly using Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a way to promote social justice by creating conditions that foster empowerment. Yet, little attention has been paid to the differences between the power structure that PAR advocates and the local community power structures. This paper seeks to evaluate the level of participation in a PAR project for multiple stakeholder groups, determine how PAR was adjusted to better fit community norms, and whether our research team was able to facilitate the emergence of PAR by adopting an approach that was relevant to the existing power relations. We conclude that power differences should not be seen as roadblocks to participation, but rather as moments of opportunity for the researchers to refine their methods and for the community and the community psychologist to challenge existing power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplaces are amongst the most influential settings in the lives of adults and community psychologists have long been interested how to foster environments that are empowering, provide a sense of community, and support diversity. Yet, despite the fact that many community psychologists work in academic settings, there is a dearth of research that examines universities as work environments, both for faculty and staff members. This paper presents a case study of an initiative at the University of Washington, the Leadership, Community, and Values Initiative that is used a collaborative process to assess the workplace environment and effect positive changes. It is hoped that a description of key aspects of the assessment and efforts toward workplace improvement will serve as a call to community psychologists to turn more of their attention to an important setting that affects many of us, and virtually all of our students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the field of community psychology has given considerable attention to how research and evaluation methods should be designed to support our goals of empowerment and social justice. Yet, as a field, we have given much less attention to whether the use of our methods actually achieves or supports our empowerment agenda. With the primary purpose of beginning to establish the norm of reporting on the impacts of our methods, this paper reports on the findings from interviews of 16 youth and adults who had participated in one participatory evaluation method (Photovoice). Two specific questions were examined: (1) What is the impact of participating in a Photovoice effort; and (2) How does the method of Photovoice foster these impacts? Overall, participants noted that they were significantly affected by their experiences as photographers and through their dialogue with neighbors during Photovoice group sessions. Impacts ranged from an increased sense of control over their own lives to the emergence of the kinds of awareness, relationships, and efficacy supportive of participants becoming community change agents. According to participants, Photovoice fostered these changes by (a) empowering them as experts on their lives and community, (b) fostering deep reflection, and (c) creating a context safe for exploring diverse perspectives. The implications of these findings for the science and practice of community psychology are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence affects women globally. Domestic violence in India is embedded in structures of patriarchy, cultural norms, and a conservative social structure (Biswas, 2017). Community narratives help to create meaning and impact human behavior and can be tools of empowerment (Rappaport, 1995). They can also provide an important means of detecting changes in norms. Community engagement efforts that focus on empowering communities can play an important role in creating empowering narratives. Organizational settings like grassroots agencies can play a salient role in providing opportunities for community engagement leading to the creation of new community narratives and personal stories. This study sought to examine the work of a grassroots agency in India engaged in community action aimed at social change in the response to domestic violence, with a special focus on understanding shifting community narratives related to the response to domestic violence. Based on data from semi‐structured interviews, archival data, and participant‐observations, and using a modified‐grounded theory approach, our results identified five major themes reflecting counter narratives on domestic violence. These included (a) awareness and discourse on gender related issues, (b) framing domestic violence as a social issue, (c) supporting the empowerment of women, (d) supporting disclosure of violence, and (e) supporting intervening in cases of violence. Implications of our findings for social change work in the response to domestic violence are discussed. Highlights: Community narratives can provide an important means of detecting changes in norms.Social movements can target and change community narratives to redefine problems.Community engagement that empowers communities can create empowering narratives.This study highlights various counter narratives in the response to domestic violence.Implications for social change work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to social action campaigns, some youth organizing groups provide formative learning experiences which engage youth in relevant sociopolitical issues through critical approaches. These groups support sociopolitical development (SPD), a self and socially‐oriented process which influences youth personally, politically, and professionally into adulthood. This study explored how youth organizing experiences influenced SPD in the professional domain, applying an empowerment lens. Phenomenologically‐based interviews were conducted with former sexual health education youth organizers and adult program staff. Former youth participants chose socially‐oriented career paths influenced by the group's empowering approach to sexual health education and advocacy. They related meaningful sociopolitical learning experiences (e.g., interpersonal, educational, and civic engagement) to empowerment outcomes (e.g., political efficacy, critical awareness, and participatory behaviors) which informed career decisions. Professionally, participants sought to empower others as the group empowered them, drawing upon youth organizing social and human capital as they worked toward this aim. Combining sociopolitical and empowerment theorizing, the study adds to what is known about how purposefully designed youth organizing experiences support long‐term development outcomes for individuals. Viewed as socially‐oriented career development sites, youth organizing groups build capacity for social change beyond the groups themselves. Implications for youth organizing scholars and practitioners are provided. Highlights: Youth organizers were change agents around relevant issues in the community, including sexual health.Former youth organizers remained committed to critical social action into adulthood.In‐depth interviews were conducted with former youth organizers and program staff.Qualitative findings relate youth organizing experiences to empowerment outcomes.Guidance for youth‐serving organizations in supporting empowering youth organizing experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examines a psychosocial process linking women's involvement in a grassroots women's organization with skills and experiences to promote empowered solidarity. Empowered solidarity is described as a process of increasing the sense of connection and capacity to create social transformation among a group of people united by interest in addressing a social issue. Data collected and analyzed for this research were 298 quantitative surveys conducted with two groups of women living in rural Nicaragua. One group of women were members of a grassroots feminist organization, and the other group lived in nearby communities where the organization did not offer programs. Findings document higher levels of leadership skills and sense of community, and lower levels of powerlessness among members of the organization. Additionally, tests of a process model using structural equation modeling provides support for a model that links involvement in the organization to women's increased interest in, capacity and experience in working to support women, broadly. Overall findings from this research are valuable to both community psychologists and groups seeking to enhance social justice and uphold feminist values of equity and community well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and environmental determinants of childhood obesity present a public health dilemma, particularly in low-income communities of color. Case studies of two community-based organizations participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) childhood obesity initiative demonstrate multilevel, culturally situated community organizing strategies to address the root causes of this public health disparity. Informed by a 3-lens prescription--Social Justice, Culture-Place, and Organizational Capacity--contained in the CCHE Change Model and Evaluation Frame, we present examples of individual, organizational, and community empowerment to redress systemic inequities that manifest in poor health outcomes for people of color. These case studies offer compelling evidence that public health disparities in these communities may effectively be abated through strategies that employ bottom-up, communitylevel approaches for (a) identifying proximal and distal determinants of public health disparities, and (b) empowering communities to directly redress these inequities. Guided by this ecological framework, application of the CCHE evaluation approach demonstrated the necessity to document the granularity of community organizing for community health, adding to the community psychology literature on empowering processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth partnerships are a promising but understudied strategy for prevention and health promotion. Specifically, little is known about how the functioning of youth partnerships differs from that of adult partnerships. Accordingly, this study compared the functioning of youth partnerships with that of adult partnerships. Several aspects of partnership functioning, including leadership, task focus, cohesion, participation costs and benefits, and community support, were examined. Standardized partnership functioning surveys were administered to participants in three smoke-free youth coalitions (n = 44; 45 % female; 43 % non-Hispanic white; mean age = 13) and in 53 Communities That Care adult coalitions (n = 673; 69 % female; 88 % non-Hispanic white; mean age = 49). Multilevel regression analyses showed that most aspects of partnership functioning did not differ significantly between youth and adult partnerships. These findings are encouraging given the success of the adult partnerships in reducing community-level rates of substance use and delinquency. Although youth partnership functioning appears to be strong enough to support effective prevention strategies, youth partnerships faced substantially more participation difficulties than adult partnerships. Strategies that youth partnerships can use to manage these challenges, such as creative scheduling and increasing opportunities for youth to help others directly, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and evaluation studies measuring the construct of empowerment within international community development and human rights initiatives are rare due to a lack of validated measures appropriate for the cultural context. This study represents an initial effort to develop and test the Brief Azerbaijani Empowerment Scale (BAES), an instrument designed to assess relational and intrapersonal components of psychological empowerment among adult community residents (n = 350) in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet country with a predominantly Muslim culture. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the underlying dimensionality of the BAES, and path analysis was used to examine relationships between subscales of the BAES and a set of conceptually relevant variables (i.e., alienation, sense of community, and involvement in community organizations). Findings supported the reliability and validity of the BAES, which may be useful to future efforts to develop more comprehensive measures of intrapersonal and relational empowerment. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multi-method study examines tensions in the practice of youth-led participatory research (YPAR) in urban high schools among 15 semester-cohorts. Student participants in the present study were 77 ethnically diverse youth from four high schools in a major metropolitan school district. Data were gathered using systematic classroom observations, interviews with teachers and students involved in the projects, and participant observation. The two most commonly-constrained phases of the YPAR project were issue selection and action steps. A central tension in the issue selection phase for projects enacted across multiple semester cohorts was the tension between original inquiry and 'traction:' Sticking with the same topic enabled sustained building of strategic alliances and expertise for making change, but limited the incoming cohort's power to define the problem to be addressed. In further analyses, we identified processes that promoted student power despite continuity-related constraints-teachers' framing and buy-in strategies, 'micro-power' compensation, and alignment of students' interests with the prior cohort-as well as constraints in other phases of the projects. This study's findings regarding the promotion of youth power in the face of constraints advance the integration of theory and practice in youth-led research and have implications for participatory research more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empowerment is an interdisciplinary construct heavily grounded in the theories of community psychology. Although empowerment has a strong theoretical foundation, few context-specific quantitative measures have been designed to evaluate empowerment for specific populations. The present study explored the factor structure of a modified empowerment scale with a cross-sectional sample of 296 women in recovery from substance use who lived in recovery homes located throughout the United States. Results from an exploratory factor analysis identified three factors of psychological empowerment which were closely related to previous conceptualizations of psychological empowerment: self-perception, resource knowledge and participation. Further analyses demonstrated a hierarchical relationship among the three factors, with resource knowledge predicting participation when controlling for self-perception. Finally, a correlational analysis demonstrated the initial construct validity of each factor, as each factor of empowerment was significantly and positively related to self-esteem. Implications for the application of psychological empowerment theory and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological empowerment has been theorized as a construct with emotional, behavioral and cognitive components. Yet, many studies have stressed that empowerment processes are contingent on interpersonal relationships. Moreover, theory suggests that power is developed and exercised through relationships. This article makes the case that expanding our conceptions of psychological empowerment through the addition of a relational component can enhance our understanding of psychological empowerment and the effectiveness of empowerment-oriented community practice. Previous research on empowerment is reviewed for relational content, and additional insights into the relational context of empowerment processes are marshaled from other concepts in community research including social capital, sense of community, social networks, social support, and citizen participation. A new iteration of the nomological network for psychological empowerment is presented, including the elements of a relational component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative approaches to change are common, and though evidence for their effectiveness is equivocal, there is growing support that councils facilitate desired changes in the systems response to intimate partner violence. Questions remain regarding the specific mechanisms by which this change is facilitated, and recent work has focused on examining the intermediate processes through which councils may produce more distal change. One such mechanism relates to the potential of councils to be empowering contexts for their membership, often comprised of front-line providers and responders. The present study examines what factors are positively related to perceived individual empowerment as an outcome for members, and importantly, considers not only perceived council context, but also the perceived organizational contexts in which each council member is employed. Study findings suggest that both contexts-council and organizational-are important when considering the degree to which members are empowered. Specifically, member participation, council leadership, and supportive council and organizational climates are significantly positively related to the degree to which councils function as empowering contexts. However, the effect of belonging to a council with a supportive climate, characterized in particular by shared power in decision-making, is stronger when members are from high organizational support settings versus low support settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that increasing egalitarian relations between young people and adults is optimal for healthy development; however, the empirical assessment of shared control in youth–adult partnerships is emerging, and the field still requires careful observation, identification, categorization and labeling. Thus, our objective is to offer a conceptual typology that identifies degrees of youth–adult participation while considering the development potential within each type. We use an empowerment framework, rooted in evidence-based findings, to identify five types of youth participation: (1) Vessel, (2) Symbolic, (3) Pluralistic, (4) Independent and (5) Autonomous. The typology is constructed as a heuristic device to provide researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with a common language for articulating degrees of youth participation for optimal child and adolescent health promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth Action Research for Prevention (YARP), a federally funded research and demonstration intervention, utilizes youth empowerment as the cornerstone of a multi-level intervention designed to reduce and/or delay onset of drug and sex risk, while increasing individual and collective efficacy and educational expectations. The intervention, located in Hartford Connecticut, served 114 African-Caribbean and Latino high school youth in a community education setting and a matched comparison group of 202 youth from 2001 to 2004. The strategy used in YARP begins with individuals, forges group identity and cohesion, trains youth as a group to use research to understand their community better (formative community ethnography), and then engages them in using the research for social action at multiple levels in community settings (policy, school-based, parental etc.) Engagement in community activism has, in turn, an effect on individual and collective efficacy and individual behavioral change. This approach is unique insofar as it differs from multilevel interventions that create approaches to attack multiple levels simultaneously. We describe the YARP intervention and employ qualitative and quantitative data from the quasi-experimental evaluation study design to assess the way in which the YARP approach empowered individual youth and groups of youth (youth networks) to engage in social action in their schools, communities and at the policy level, which in turn affected their attitudes and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to identify potential opportunities for improving member participation in community-based coalitions. We hypothesized that opportunities for influence and process competence would each foster higher levels of individual member participation. We tested these hypotheses in a sample of 818 members within 79 youth-oriented coalitions. Opportunities for influence were measured as members’ perceptions of an inclusive board leadership style and members’ reported committee roles. Coalition process competence was measured through member perceptions of strategic board directedness and meeting effectiveness. Members reported three types of participation within meetings as well as how much time they devoted to coalition business beyond meetings. Generalized linear models accommodated clustering of individuals within coalitions. Opportunities for influence were associated with individuals’ participation both within and beyond meetings. Coalition process competence was not associated with participation. These results suggest that leadership inclusivity rather than process competence may best facilitate member participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes challenges we encountered when organizing a group of African Americans and Latinos in a community where ethnic tensions had been normative. We relate how the first author, a Caucasian with a university affiliation, entered this diverse community and employed ethnographic methods in an attempt to understand it. The ethnography provides a context for the principal challenge we encountered: ensuring that the group had ethnic balance. Focusing on the group's first meeting, we describe the uncertainty of whether our work would be helpful or harmful to the community. We conclude with reflections on the gaps between science and practice in diverse communities; the utility and limits of ethnography; the multiple ecological levels of influence on the community; dilemmas around a White male taking proactive stances while trying to empower a group consisting mostly of women of color; and the influence of values we brought to the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]