Although Barker's “behavior setting theory” (Barker, 1968; Price, 1976) is widely cited for its potential applications to community psychology, critical examination of this conception reveals significant limitations in its operational definition of “community” and in the extent to which predictions regarding direct influences on behavior have been validated in natural settings. From the perspective of community psychology there is also reason to question behavior setting theory's fundamental emphasis on the structural form of settings rather than on the functions they fulfill for their participants. Adopting new units of analysis and placing greater emphasis on the intended and unintended satisfactions that settings produce will make behavior setting theory more relevant to several problems in community psychology, including community assessment, person‐environment interaction, and community change.
Care of chronic psychiatric clients in community settings is a priority issue in mental health, and current thinking proposes an interactional model encompassing both individual skills and environmental demands to explain clients' adjustment to community life. Although functional skills of chronic clients are readily measurable, we lack systematic and precise methods for describing and evaluating community settings in commensurate terms. The present study used Barker's (1968) theory of behavior settings to assess 55 structured activities and other settings in a large community residence for chronically mentally ill women. Factor analysis identified dimensions of behavioral demands involving entry requirements, levels of social interaction, dress, cooperation, and competition, and also size and frequency/duration of settings. Implications for the assessment, selection, modification, and creation of community settings for the chronically mentally ill are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.