Community Psychology at the Crossroads: Prospects for Interdisciplinary Research

Abstract

Effective engagement in interdisciplinary work is critical if community psychology is to achieve its promise as a field of ecological inquiry and social action. The purpose of this paper and special issue is to help make the benefits of interdisciplinary community research clearer and to identify and begin to address its challenges. Although some areas of psychology (e.g., biological, cognitive and health) have made substantial interdisciplinary strides in recent decades, progress in community psychology (and related areas) is more modest. In this article we explore the prospects for expanding and improving interdisciplinary community research. Challenges include designs, measures, and analytical frameworks that integrate multiple levels of analysis from individuals through families, organizations, and communities to policy jurisdictions, and the complexities involved in simultaneously bringing together multiple disciplinary collaborators and community partners. Challenges to interdisciplinary collaboration common to all disciplines include the disciplinary nature of academic culture and reward structures, limited funding for interdisciplinary work and uncertainties related to professional identity and marketability. Overcoming these challenges requires a synergy among facilitative factors at the levels of the interdisciplinary project team (e.g., the framing question; embedded relationships; leadership), the investigators (e.g., commitment to new learning; time to invest), and the external context (e.g., physical, administrative, economic and intellectual resources and support for interdisciplinary work). We conclude by identifying several exemplars of effective interdisciplinary collaborations and concrete steps our field can take to enhance our development as a vibrant community-based, multilevel discipline increasingly devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry and action.

A Social Ecological Conceptual Framework for Understanding Adolescent Health Literacy in the Health Education Classroom

“…Health promotion researchers over the past several decades have failed to attend to context, and have sometimes neglected the interface between behavioral, social, cultural and environmental interactions (Maton et al 2006;Raphael et al 2005). This oversight has created problems of knowledge translation and exchange, critical to advancing the fields of education, public health and health promotion literatures (Davis et al 2003;Lomas 2007).The model serves knowledge translation and exchange needs of researchers who are faced with the challenge of interpreting and decoding 'best practices' that simply do not meet community needs or oversimplify community realities (Green 2007) because it encourages investigations to be ''…con-ducted locally-within the context of its future use-[and therefore] stands more chance of being taken up'' (Nutley et al 2007, p. 70).…”

“…Health education also teaches adolescents to plan, think critically about and cope with these other outcomes to promote behaviors that improve health (Brey et al 2007), and essential health skills . While health behaviors are traditionally seen as the outcome of cognitive decision-making (Syme 2002), with research emphasis on the individual level of analysis (Maton et al 2006), we now understand that view does not go far enough (Nutbeam 2008). The social context matters just as much, as health behaviors result from some combination of peoples' life choices, chances and circumstances (Wharf Higgins et al 2006).…”

Multilevel Community‐Based Culturally Situated Interventions and Community Impact: An Ecological Perspective

“…Thus, such interventions rely on interdisciplinary knowledge and an interdisciplinary team (Frankish and Green, unpublished manuscript;Best et al 2003). Actualizing effective interdisciplinary wok is far more complex in practice because of the different world views of varied disciplines (Maton et al 2006). Here, appreciating disciplinary diversity is as important as diversity of communities and cultures to the success of multilevel interventions (e.g.…”

Inspiring and Advancing the Many-Disciplined Study of Institutional Trust

“…Some have noted that interesting and worthwhile problems like those listed above are necessary for inspiring transdisciplinary and transformative research (Pennington et al, 2013). Such meaningful problems may facilitate interdisciplinarity by attracting and inspiring individuals and groups of researchers to exhibit the patience that also is touted as essential for interdisciplinary success (Maton, Perkins, & Saegert, 2006;Rosenfield, 1992). Patience is indeed required if Rosenfield is correct that, for transdisciplinarity to emerge from interdisciplinarity, it requires more than just collaborations between scholars from different disciplines.…”