The Role of Affects in Culture-Based Interventions: Implications for Practice (original) (raw)
Related papers
Using ethnographic methods for development of culture-specific interventions
Journal of School Psychology, 2005
Cultural specificity is considered important in developing effective school-and community-based interventions. This article illustrates the use of ethnographic research to enhance understanding of students' cultural experiences and facilitate the development of culturally specific interventions. Ethnographic data were collected during formative and intervention phases of a school-based mental health promotion project. Data were coded using an interactive deductive-inductive process. Culture specificity was defined as the integration of etic (universal) and emic (culture-bound) perspectives. Four culture-specific themes were identified: adult-sanctioned behaviors and practices, adolescents' perspectives about the present and aspirations for the future, and societal factors. These themes encompassed code categories reflecting cultural attitudes, beliefs, customs, expectations, norms, and values; and reflected the ecological framework that guided the research. Future research is needed to address the use of combined etic-emic conceptualizations of culture in the development of culture-specific interventions.
Toward a multidimensional understanding of culture for health interventions
Social Science & Medicine, 2015
Although a substantial literature examines the relationship between culture and health in myriad individual contexts, a lack of comparative data across settings has resulted in disparate and imprecise conceptualizations of the concept for scholars and practitioners alike. This article examines medical scholars and practitioners' understandings of culture in relation to health interventions. Drawing on 142 interviews with officials from three different nongovernmental organizations working on health issues in multiple countries-Partners in Health, Oxfam America, and Sesame Workshop-we examine how these practitioners' interpretations of culture converge or diverge with recent developments in the study of the concept, as well as how these understandings influence health interventions at three different stages-design, implementation, and evaluation-of a project. Based on these analyses, a tripartite definition of culture is builtas knowledge, practice, and change-and these distinct conceptualizations are linked to the success or failure of a project at each stage of an intervention. In so doing, the study provides a descriptive and analytical starting point for scholars interested in understanding the theoretical and empirical relevance of culture for health interventions, and sets forth concrete recommendations for practitioners working to achieve robust improvements in health outcomes.
Incorporating Culture Into the Study of Affect and Health
Curhan and colleagues (2014) have correctly pointed out that culture is likely to play a critical role in understanding affect-health associations. Despite wide recognition of crosscultural variation in experienced affect, affect ideals, and other emotion-related cognitions (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Mesquita, 2001; Tsai, 2007; Williamson et al., 2012), affect-health research rarely includes cultural variables. We take this point to heart and agree that health-related science should pay more attention to the role that this distinction may play. While we agree with this greater point, the intent of our work (Pressman, Gallagher, & Lopez, 2013) was not to suggest that there is no cultural variation in affect-health connections. Rather, the goal was to highlight that emotion matters for physical well-being despite the many known differences across the 142 countries in our sample. Indeed, across all countries assessed, positive and negative affect (PA and NA, respectively) were both associated with physical health. While the relative strength of the associations of PA and NA with health was not tested in our study, we agree that it may to some extent reflect the values that specific societies place on different emotions. We took the opportunity raised by the response article to revisit our sample and examine whether the pattern observed by Curhan et al. (2014) would be replicated in Gallup World Poll data. That is, we tested whether NA was less connected to poor health in East Asian countries, as would be expected given the greater acceptance of negative feelings in East Asian societies (Tsai & Levenson, 1997; Williamson et al., 2012).
This second edition of the bestselling textbook Cross-Cultural Psychology has been substantially revised to provide the student with the most comprehensive overview of cross-cultural psychology available in one volume. The team of internationally acclaimed authors have included the most up-to-date research in the field, and written two new chapters on language and on emotion. Within a universalist framework the book emphasizes not only research on basic processes and theory, but also methodology and applications of cross-cultural psychology with respect to acculturation, organizational processes, communication, health, and national development. The new format of the book is designed to make it even more accessible and reader-friendly, and includes chapter outlines, chapter summaries, further reading, and a glossary of key terms.
Tinkering with Perfection: Theory Development in the Intervention Cultural Adaptation Field
Child & Youth Care Forum, 2012
Background Testing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) outside of their home country has become increasingly commonplace. There is a need for theoretically guided research on how to best create and test the effects of culturally adapted interventions. Objective To illustrate how the field might raise the scientific and practical value of future effectiveness and dissemination trials of culturally adapted interventions, as well as to provide support for theoretically informed research on this subject to take greater root. Methods Nine theories that offer guidance on how to adapt existing EBIs for a new cultural group were summarized and evaluated. Results Commonalities among the selected theories included a focus on the need for collaboration as part of the adaptation process and shared emphasis on taking systematic steps to select an intervention to adapt, as well as calls for adaptations to be guided by specific types of empirical studies. Among the theories, variability existed in terms of what constituted an adaptation. Conclusions As EBIs go global, intervention adaptation promises to be the subject of substantial future scholarly attention. There is a need to develop systematic evidence-based methods that allow for some degree of adaptation, while still bringing about EBIs' desired benefits. Keywords Commentary Á Intervention Á Cultural adaptation Á Cultural tailoring The authors found no conflict of interest between themselves and any organization that may be affected by the publication of this article.
Cross-cultural psychology: research and applications (Second, revised edition), 2002
This second edition of the bestselling textbook Cross-Cultural Psychology has been substantially revised to provide the student with the most comprehensive overview of cross-cultural psychology available in one volume. The team of internationally acclaimed authors have included the most up-to-date research in the field, and written two new chapters on language and on emotion. Within a universalist framework the book emphasizes not only research on basic processes and theory, but also methodology and applications of cross-cultural psychology with respect to acculturation, organizational processes, communication, health, and national development. The new format of the book is designed to make it even more accessible and reader-friendly, and includes chapter outlines, chapter summaries, further reading, and a glossary of key terms.
Frontiers in Future Transportation
Over the last 20 years, transportation agencies have added culture-based approaches to the existing education, engineering, and enforcement (3E) strategies being used as a means of reducing traffic related injuries and fatalities. Despite this increased interest, there have been comparatively few evaluations of these interventions. At the same time, many other organizational types have adopted culture-based strategies either to improve safety or to enhance other elements of organizational performance. In aggregate, the evaluations of culture-focused interventions across a range of settings offer an untapped body of information about the models of culture being leveraged to affect change, the intervention strategies used to impact culture, the impacts of these strategies, and more. The research presented here used a systematic analysis of published, peer-reviewed evaluations of culture-based interventions designed to enhance traffic safety, safe workplaces, and effective practices mo...
This second edition of the bestselling textbook Cross-Cultural Psychology has been substantially revised to provide the student with the most comprehensive overview of cross-cultural psychology available in one volume. The team of internationally acclaimed authors have included the most up-to-date research in the field, and written two new chapters on language and on emotion. Within a universalist framework the book emphasizes not only research on basic processes and theory, but also methodology and applications of cross-cultural psychology with respect to acculturation, organizational processes, communication, health, and national development. The new format of the book is designed to make it even more accessible and reader-friendly, and includes chapter outlines, chapter summaries, further reading, and a glossary of key terms.
Research in Culture and Psychology: Past lessons and future challenges.
Since the dawn of psychology as a science, conceptual and methodological questions have accompanied research at the intersection of culture and psychology. We review some of these questions using two dominant concepts -independent vs. interdependent social orientation and analytic vs. holistic cognitive style. Studying the relationship between culture and psychology can be difficult due to sampling restrictions and response biases. Since these challenges have been mastered, a wealth of research has accumulated on how culture influences cognition, emotion, and the self. Building on this work, we outline a set of new challenges for culture and psychology. Such challenges include questions about conceptual clarity, within-cultural and subcultural variations (e.g., variations due to social class), differentiation and integration of processes at the group vs. individual level of analysis, modeling of how cultural processes unfold over time, and integration of insights from etic and emic methodological approaches. We review emerging work addressing these challenges, proposing that future research on culture and psychology is more exciting than ever.