Community Psychology: IPV among rural young adults, social media in disasters, and collective efficacy

This article discusses the prevalence of IPV among rural young adults due to poverty, the role of social media in disaster planning and response, and factors related to collective efficacy in neighborhoods. The studies were conducted through surveys and household surveys in various cities across the US.

Running head: COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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Edwards, K. M., Mattingly, M. J., Dixon, K. J., & Banyard, V. L. (2014). Community
matters: Intimate partner violence among rural young adults. American journal of
community psychology, 53(1-2), 198-207.
This article puts light on the extent of poverty, which leads to violence among
intimate partners. This is common in young adults in rural areas. Intimate Partner Violence
(IPV) takes place at a very soaring rate in US. This is very common among the young adults
and adolescents. This makes it important to apprehend the patterns of perpetration and
victimization among these groups. A survey had been carried out in order to study these
factors.
To carry out the experiment two hundred and three young adults consisting of 32.6%
men and 67.4% women were made to participate. This group was taken from 16 rural areas
across US. The countries were chosen based on their geographic and demographic variability.
The recruitment for the survey was done through various measures which including flyers
that were posted at organizations and local businesses, emails were distributed to students
belonging to local community as well as 4 year colleges, online advertisements were given,
newspaper advertisements were also given. The eligibility criteria were that the people
participating had to be an inhabitant of the selected rural countries since at least four years.
People who fulfilled the criteria had to go through an online consent form and give their
consent if they wanted to take part in the survey. The people taking part in the survey were
provided with gift cards, this helped them in attracting more people for the survey. Sixty
percent of the information was extracted from New England. Thirty-six percent was from
Southern US. All the participants were between the ages of 18-24 the average age being
21.05. A questionnaire was set which had to be asked to the participants. The two basic
control variables of this study was gender and annual income of the family. In case of gender,
the participants identified to be men were coded zero and indentified to be women were

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coded as one. In case of annual income, families with low income were coded as zero and the
families with middle level or high income were coded as one. Deviations and means for IPV
and collective efficacy are as follows, the mean of IPV perpetration among women is 1.99,
for IPV victimization is 2.45, IPV Bystander is 3.46 and the Collective Efficacy is 7.93. In
case of men the IPV perpetration is 3.52, IPV victimization is 4.83, IPV Bystander is 2.79
and the Collective Efficacy is 8.28.
Participants were educated about the anonymity of the research that has been carried out.
They were not made to participate on the survey forcefully. After their proper consent was
received, the study had been carried out. They had signed a form in order to give their
consent for the survey. The survey was carried out in abidance with the Institutional Review
Board of the university.
Houston, J. B., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M. F., Park, E. H., Goldstein Hode, M.,
Halliwell, M. R., ... & Griffith, S. A. (2015). Social media and disasters: a functional
framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and
research. Disasters, 39(1), 1-22.
This article defines the function of social platform in disaster scheduling, research and
response. Communication is the basic component for disaster planning, recovery and
response. An effective communication on disaster can help in preventing a disaster or
decrease its impact, at the same time an ineffective communication regarding disaster can
yield a disaster and increase its negative impact. Disasters usually take place when there is a
crisis or a hole in the communication process. Disasters cause damage to the information and
communication infrastructure, this reduces the flow of information and reduces its
availability.

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In order to develop a framework of users as well as uses on disaster social media,
they began by directing a literature review in a comprehensive manner. They searched online
literatures, scientific literatures and official literature. Every literature review engaged the
terms disasters, catastrophe, social network, internet, crisis and some more. Official literature
was extracted with the help of Google Scholar and Google Search. Scientific literature was
looked for with the help of PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Google Scholar. Their operation
included information regarding the natural disasters such as tornado, tsunami and many more
as well as manmade disasters such as terrorist attacks and mass shooting. This study did not
include crisis faced by organizations that were not related to disasters, such as ongoing
conflicts and political crisis. After identification of all the sources, they worked together
using a qualitative approach in order to divide the users and uses of social media disaster in
various categories. After the identification of the categories, portions relevant to the
categories were placed under them. The review of the research pinpointed some users such as
communities, governments, organizations, news media and individuals. According to their
review, these users were found to produce disastrous content on social media, representing
the two-way communication characteristic of social media. According to the research, social
media has proved to be very useful in many ways. It helps in informing people about the pre
event, even and the post event. Various uses of disaster social media uses have been
characterized under disaster phases. Some of them include providing and receiving disaster
warnings, which fall under pre event phase, signaling and detecting disasters, which fall
under pre event, and event phase. Delivering as well as consuming news telecast about the
disaster, which falls under ongoing event and then post event phase then lastly discussing
scientific, political and social causes and responsibilities for events, which is under post event
phase.

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Collins, C. R., Neal, J. W., & Neal, Z. P. (2014). Transforming individual civic
engagement into community collective efficacy: The role of bonding social
capital. American journal of community psychology, 54(3-4), 328-336.
This study explored the factors related to the collective efficacy of neighborhood
among the residents. Collective efficacy means residents’ capacity to take actions or
decisions on factors that affect their lives. They researched the intermediate function of
residents’ perception on bonding of social capital in cooperation of collective efficacy and
civic engagement. The bondage of social capital represented the relation between collective
efficacy and civic engagement. To be mentioned specifically the residents, reporting higher
level of engagement in civics also reported greater level of social bondage in capital as well.
As a contradictory, the residents reporting greater level of capital bondage reported greater
grade of collective efficacy in neighborhood as well.
In this study, people shared their beliefs on the influence of collective efficacy on the
kind of future they want to attain with the help of collective action. The amount of effort they
put into the collective endeavor. They also shared about their ability to use the resources,
their patience level when the group does not seem to produce quick results, when the group
faces forcible oppositions and their exposure to the discouragement, which can force people
to take unrealistic decisions. In the neighborhood, the collective efficacy has been related
with reduction in violence, obesity rates and homicide. The information used for this study is
the response that has been recorded to household surveys between 2008 and 2010. The
survey that has been carried out is a division of Comprehensive Community Initiative (CCI);
this usually takes place among the neighborhoods with low income crosswise seven cities of
US. These cities included Des Moines, Denver, Louisville, Indianapolis, San Antonio,
Providence and Seattle. This study aimed in improving social, economic, health outcomes
and educational outcomes for the underprivileged students and their families. This research

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was started in 1999 and was carried out for 10 years in coordination with National Opinion
Research Center, the University of Chicago and local entities. Households were randomly
made to take part in the research and 4316 samples were received. Among these samples, 196
cases had to be deleted because of missing data on some fields. Responses were selected
because weather the family had children. Center child was to be selected randomly. After a
center child is selected, any of his guardians was selected to be the respondent. On an
average, the respondents were of the age of 44.5 years. In order to reevaluate residents’
engagement behaviors, individuals were told to respond in a yes or no. the responds were
summed up in order to get an average result. The sample questions included weather they
have ever spoken to a local political official or whether they have talked to a religious
minister or leader and seek help regarding neighborhood problem. They used a list of
regression analyses in order to diagnose their two main questions for research, they are what
is the partnership among collective efficacy and engagement in civics and what role is played
by the social capital bondage as a method in order to promote efficacy. The results were that
the people who were more civically engaged in neighbors have reported greater level of
efficacy. Results also indicated that several factors such as educational status, variables of
demographic control and race proved to be the factors influencing collective efficacy.
Especially individuals without a degree of high school reported greater level of collective
efficacy, whereas the ones having an educational qualification reported had lower level of
collective efficacy. It is very common that the educated people do not want to get along with
people around them. This is noticed that educated people have less unity among themselves
because not every individual thinks in a similar way. People with not much education will
show outstanding unity power among them.
The individuals were allowed to take part in the research only after their consent was
received. It was made sure that the participants were kept anonymous.

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Bibliography
Collins, C. R., Neal, J. W., & Neal, Z. P. (2014). Transforming individual civic engagement
into community collective efficacy: The role of bonding social capital. American
journal of community psychology, 54(3-4), 328-336.
Edwards, K. M., Mattingly, M. J., Dixon, K. J., & Banyard, V. L. (2014). Community
matters: Intimate partner violence among rural young adults. American journal of
community psychology, 53(1-2), 198-207.
Houston, J. B., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M. F., Park, E. H., Goldstein Hode, M., Halliwell,
M. R., ... & Griffith, S. A. (2015). Social media and disasters: a functional framework
for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research. Disasters, 39(1), 1-
22.