Transforming Psychology: Interpretive and Participatory Research Methods

Transforming psychology, the title of this volume, refers to the personal and social transformations that take place through the work we do, as well as to our goal of transforming the field of psychology itself through the inclusion of the interpretive and participatory methods described here. In this volume we examine how these methods have been and continue to be incorporated into the field of psychology and the challenges researchers have faced in doing so. We examine the epistemological foundations upon which these methods are based and provide a series of exemplars to illustrate the variety of ways in which interpretive and participatory methods are being applied. Finally, we discuss some of the barriers that remain to fulfilling this goal of transformation within our work and within our discipline.     

The New Economy and the Forest: Rural Development in the Post‐Industrial Spaces of the Rural Alleghenies*

Objective. Government policy has long linked resource production with economic development in surrounding rural communities. The purpose of this article is to examine how the USDA Forest Service 's (USFS) resource‐based, rural development policies have shifted due to economic restructuring and environmental challenges to the “management” of nature. Methods. Historical data was gathered on USFS timber harvests and policies toward forest‐dependent communities. Data was also gathered through interviews and participant‐observation on a USFS‐supported, locally planned ecotourism project. Results. USFS rural development policies have shifted from predominantly providing federally determined, sustained timber harvests in the industrial era to increasingly emphasizing local, amenity‐based entrepreneurship and economic diversification in the post‐industrial era. Conclusions. USFS rural development policies and resource production have been de‐coupled. However, amenity‐based development may depend both on amenity migrants and sustained commitment from external sources to support local initiative, given limited entrepreneurship in rural areas long dependent on high‐wage extraction and manufacturing.     

‘Undeserving’ mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care

Although teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based social workers who work with young mothers in/from care. Our findings indicated that social workers reflect prevailing middle class values, including norms about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting, and centred around the belief that adolescent pregnancy is, in and of itself, bad. One of the most significant ramifications of workers’ values was their belief about the inevitability of ‘the cycle’: of children in care begetting children who ultimately came into care. Ironically, though workers and young mothers were both preoccupied by the concept of ‘the cycle’, and each were determined to break it, the two groups had very different ideas about what the cycle was all about and what perpetuated it. Unfortunately, this disjunction in perspectives, along with major recent shifts in the direction of child welfare policy and practice and related constraints in the resources at workers’ disposal, conjoined to create significant barriers to what workers and young women both recognized as supportive practice with youth in care.     

The Psycho-Ecology of Armed Conflict

As natural resources are depleted and global population grows, environmental security is becoming an increasingly salient dimension of long-term peace. In this article, we discuss current views of environmental security and go on to argue that the social psychological dimensions of resource-based conflict should also be addressed. We briefly describe six examples of such conflicts, and conclude that psychologists can play an important role in promoting peace, by bringing attention to, and helping find ways to mitigate, the psycho-ecological dimensions of armed conflict.     

Optimal Designs for Stated Choice Experiments that Incorporate Position Effects

Davidson and Beaver (1977 Davidson , R. R. , Beaver , R. J. ( 1977 ). On extending the Bradley–Terry model to incorporate within-pair order effects . Biometrics 33 : 693 – 702 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) extended the Bradley–Terry model to incorporate the possible effect of position within a choice set on the choices made in paired comparisons experiments. We further extend the Davidson–Beaver result to choice sets of any size and show, under a mild restriction, that designs optimal for the multinomial logit model are still optimal. Designs balanced for carry-over effects of all orders can be used to construct designs with a diagonal information matrix for attribute effects. The theoretical results are derived assuming equal merits and we discuss the possible consequences of assuming unequal merits in an example.     

Public diplomacy to promote Global Public Goods (GPG): Conceptual expansion, ethical grounds, and rhetoric

Traditional conceptualizations of public diplomacy stress three dimensions, namely image cultivation, advocacy of national interests, and promotion of mutual understanding. This research expands the scope of public diplomacy by adding an additional dimension, namely promotion of Global Public Goods (GPG). The research argues that creating and preserving GPG should be one of the functions of public diplomacy in an era when global warming and globalization of health become realities that dictate the entire humankind to meet the challenge in collective action. The research also explored the ethical grounds and rhetoric of the new dimension of public diplomacy.     

Caring for Preschool Children in Urban Brazil

ABSTRACT: This paper examines modes of child care choice for young children in urban Brazil. Analysis of child care in developing countries is rare, in spite of its relevance to many policy issues. We model child care choice as a function of characteristics of the child and the mother, including the mother's predicted wage and probability of employment, the presence of other young children and potential caregivers. The results highlight the importance of the institutional structure of the labour market and the formal child care market and reveal policy-relevant information regarding the allocation of child care responsibility among household members.