What is the theory of change that underlies your proposed intervention?

Selecting an Appropriate
Community
· Specific
community:
This assignment will be much more clear and easier to write if you select a specific
community, ideally a geographic community and ideally on the smaller side.
Great examples include a specific neighborhood, a small town, a specific
Indigenous community, an informal encampment, an assisted living
facility/retirement home, an ethnic enclave, etc.
· An
outgroup:
Select a community that you are NOT a part of (e.g. you do not live there, you
did not grow up there, not your personal group of friends etc.). This will help
you approach the assignment as a community psychologist in an “outsider” role and
offers an opportunity to think through the cultural humility and participatory
approaches we have discussed in this course so far. You could potentially
select a community that you are personally familiar with but not a member of,
e.g. the town where your grandparents live, a friend’s neighborhood,

· Adequate
information available: You will need to be able to access adequate
information about a community to do this assignment properly. This information
will likely be found online (this is not an in-person research project, please
do not contact or attempt to interview community members that you do not
already know personally) through news stories, community web-pages, etc.

Selecting an Appropriate
“Challenge”
· Try to make this a
“real” challenge a real community is facing. You can identify these by
reviewing online media articles about a given community including ways the
community itself has spoken about its challenges. Whenever possible, follow the
lead of the community and try to use their language to describe the challenge.
· Please ensure that
you select a community challenge to address in a thoughtful, respectful and
“community psychology-esque” manner. This means you should avoid “blaming the
victim” and include a structural and “upstream” analysis of the roots or source
of the challenges facing a community.
· Ensure the challenge
the community is facing is appropriately “psychological”. That is, make sure
you can usefully apply theories and concepts from community psychology to
describe the challenge you have selected in terms of psychological outcomes for
individuals within a community setting (e.g. well-being, substance use,
educational achievement, mental health, stress and coping, etc.)

Detailed Assignment
Instructions:
· To begin your assignment, you need to write a
very brief “positionality statement”. These are fairly common in qualitative
and community-based research. Yours does not need to be complicated and should
be very concise. It should include a brief statement acknowledging any relevant
identities, communities or experiences that have shaped you and how this may
affect your proposed work in the hypothetical community. For more in-depth
information on the practice of reflexivity and positionality statements you may
review
this academic article or this
more
accessible article from Medium. Once
again, this is NOT meant to be an in-depth or comprehensive statement (some versions
of positionality statements could be very long!). You just need to demonstrate
that you are thinking critically about who you are and what biases and
experiences you bring to community-based work. This is a great skill to
practice before entering any community or research project for the first time.
Aim for about 100 words here. Keep it short and concise!
· As in Paper #1, your paper must begin with a concise
description of your selected community. You may approach this in different ways,
but key components will likely include the community’s name, location, (brief)
history, boundaries and perhaps some description of what makes this place a
“community”. Feel free to draw on definitions of “community” from lecture or
readings here. Cite the sources of your information on the community and keep
this concise (approximately 100 words).
· The bulk of your paper is comprised of the
following two sections, each approximately 400 words.
· “Research proposal” – Using concepts, theories,
and approaches from community psychology (ideally ones we have covered in
lectures and readings from the course), outline a brief proposal for how you
would initiate, plan, and conduct collaborative research in your chosen
community to understand one challenge the community is facing.
o
The
purpose of this section is to demonstrate your understanding of material from
the course that has reviewed some of the approaches, pitfalls, and critical
issues in conducting collaborative, community-based research in a community
setting. This could include considerations of the some of the following points
in this non-exhaustive list:
§
How
has this community experienced research in the past?
§
How do
you plan to initiate contact with the community?
§
How
would you analyze the data and what would you do with the results?
o
Note:
While a truly community-directed research project might be more open-ended with
a research focus not determined in advance, for the purposes of this assignment
you should explicitly identify what the “challenge” facing the community is
that you will be researching. The goal of your research proposal needs to be to
conduct community-based research that will help to better understand this
challenge in order t

“Structural/community intervention proposal” – In the final section, you will use
concepts, theories and approaches from community psychology (ideally ones we
have covered in lectures and readings from the course) to outline a brief
proposal for a structural/community intervention to address the challenge
identified in the previous section.
o
The
purpose of this section is to demonstrate your understanding of the material
from the course that has reviewed different approaches, critical issues, and
methods for planning, implementing, and evaluating structural/community
interventions. This could include considerations of the some of the following
points in this non-exhaustive list:
§
What
is the proposed connection between the “structure” you are targeting for
intervention and the challenge you plan to address in the community?
§
What
is the theory of change that underlies your proposed intervention? (i.e. how is
it supposed to work)
§
What
tangible actions would be required to address the structural or community roots
of the challenge?

FORMAT

The paper must be no longer than 1000 words (about 4
pages double-spaced) not including references or title.
· An abstract is NOT required.
·
Use APA format. For
example: Your paper should be double-spaced, page-numbered in the top right
corner, 1-inch margins, 12-pt font, etc.
Cite all of your sources, including lectures and the textbook (i.e. Jason,
et al., 2019 – see below for full reference) and provide a fully conforming
APA-style references section at the end of your paper
·
Ensure the source comes from community
psychology or is at least broadly related to community psychology. If you are
unsure, post your question (e.g. “Is this a community psychology source?”) on
the Sakai discussion board for the class.
·
Any reference that is included in the paper must be
coherently tied to your analysis and explained.
· Your paper must include A TITLE
PAGE that includes all of
the following:
o
“PSYC 2P90 – Fall 2021 –
Community Intervention – Paper #2” as the title
o
A word count for the
body of the paper (EXCLUDING Title Page and References)
o
Please include your
student number, but do NOT write your name on the title page

Last Completed Projects