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While the concept of culture has long been central to community psychology research and intervention, it has most frequently referred to the communities in which such work occurs. The purpose of this paper is to reframe this discussion by viewing community interventions as instances of intercultural contact between the culture of science, reflected in community intervention research, and the culture of the communities in which those interventions occur. Following a brief discussion of the complexities of culture as a concept, two illustrative stories of failed community interventions are provided to highlight the centrality of cultural and contextual understanding as prelude to community intervention. These stories, set 50 years apart, reflect the depth and pervasive influence of both the culture of science and the culture of communities. Next, a series of propositions about the culture of social science as a partial reflection of the broader culture of the United States are offered, and their implications for the conduct of community interventions drawn. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations which, together, provide an ecological mind-set for taking culture seriously in community interventions. Central to this mind set are the importance of focusing on communities rather than programs and emphasizing the intervention goal of choice over change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined whether community readiness, prevention knowledge, coalition functioning, and barriers are linked to perceived effectiveness of community prevention coalitions. Interviews were conducted with 203 key leaders in Communities That Care (CTC) prevention boards in 21 Pennsylvania communities. Community-level means for the reliable self-report measures were utilized separately and in combination with research staff ratings, state technical assistant staff ratings, and other data. The results indicated that the strong link between readiness and perceived effectiveness was mediated by internal coalition functioning. The extent of CTC linkage with outside community entities was not linked to perceived effectiveness. The study concludes that community readiness is an important condition for success of a prevention coalition, and exerts effects mainly through the quality of the coalition's internal functioning. Member turnover and infighting appear to be important factors related to internal functioning. Linkage with outside entities may be more important for coalition models where the coalition is more dependent on local institutions for resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities across the United States are collaborating to create a coordinated response to intimate partner violence (IPV); ideally, this involves promoting best practices in the justice and human service systems and engaging a broad array of community sectors (e.g., human service; criminal justice; faith; business; education) to promote victim safety and batterer accountability (Pence, ). The current study examined the extent to which Family Violence Coordinating Councils resulted in change in the systems' response to IPV. Specifically, we examined judicial order of protection data from 1990 to 2005 to establish whether the formation and development of councils across the state of Illinois promoted the issuance of plenary orders of protection following the initial granting of emergency orders of protection. Such a pattern would indicate implementation of a best practice in the system response to IPV. Utilizing a multilevel logistic modeling approach, we found that the introduction and development of councils was indeed related to the accessibility of plenary orders of protection. The specific ways in which councils may have influenced such an outcome and the implications of this approach for research on council effectiveness are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]