442 Community Psychology
conceptual model was the relationship between building
skills and behavioral adjustment. They found SPS increased
students’ social problem skills and behavioral adjustment
independently. Weissberg et al. noted the importance of the
findings and sought to encourage those factors in children that
were found to mediate adjustment.
Through the availability of increased funding from both
federal and private foundations, more investigators were able
to launch prevention trials. One of the concepts that helped to
bridge past research with the emphasis on prevention was the
concept of social support (Barrera, 2000; Vaux, 1988). In
early efforts at developing prevention services, psychologists
realized that recipients of prevention efforts benefited from
the active presence and caring of others. Community psy-
chologists became active contributors to this literature and
helped to establish the constructs of social support, mutual
help, and self-help as essential variables in prevention pro-
gramming (Levy, 2000). Examples of this type of work were
included in a 1991 special issue of the AJCP(Borkman,
1991). These contributions encouraged moving away from a
disease orientation to analyses of factors contributing to indi-
vidual positive health.
As mentioned earlier, Cowen has been a leading propo-
nent for the concept of wellness as a way to build a scientific
basis for discourse on and actions toward positive health
(Cicchetti et al., 2000; Cowen, 2000b). In the most recent
published literature relating to strengths and resources,
Cowen (2000b) continued to assert psychological wellness as
a primary focus for community psychologists, as he has over
the past four decades. He discussed three main terms that
have been used in connection with this concept, including
competence, empowerment, and heightened resilience in
children: “These phenotypically disparate concepts... find
genotypic synchrony in a framework in which routes to psy-
chological wellness is the overarching phenomenon of inter-
est” (p. 90). Cowen also advocated examining both the
personal and environmental contributors to psychological
wellness and discussed a number of sources of influence over
people’s psychological wellness, including the family con-
text, the child’s total educational experience, significant so-
cial settings and systems in which a person interacts, and the
broad societal surround.
In the last two decades, community psychologists have
developed multiple conceptions and highlighted various
facets of the prevention perspective. In his 1980 presidential
address to the Society for Community Research and Action
(SCRA, Division 27 of the APA), Julian Rappaport pre-
sented the concept of empowerment as an alternative to the
traditional medical and disease orientation of prevention
research (Rappaport, 1981; Zimmerman, 1990, 1995, 2000;
Zimmerman & Rappaport, 1988). Articulating an emerging
mood, he questioned the clinical heritage of prevention and
advocated for prevention work to be a community and en-
abling enterprise, an enterprise consistent with the values
expressed at Swampscott. Tableman (1989) emphasized the
significance of pragmatic processes of prevention programs
in her Distinguished Practice Award address to SCRA in- She challenged community psychologists to emphasize
the long-term implementation of prevention programs and
not just focus on the one-time demonstration of a particular
project (Tableman, 1989).
Tensions around Two Types of Prevention Research:
Prevention Science and Action ResearchTwo contrasting approaches have emerged within the domain
of prevention: prevention science and action research. The
prevention scientist focuses on the technology of the inter-
vention, precision of the measuring instruments, and the
search to control confounding variables as much as possible
so as to establish the validity of the intervention. In general,
classical experimental research designs are employed. In this
work, the focus is to generate testable hypotheses and rigor-
ous quantitative analyses to be precise about the efficacy
of interventions. This approach is fundamentally concerned
with the development of measurement techniques and statis-
tical analyses, with an eye toward advancing knowledge
for the professions and increasing the scientific status of pre-
vention research among the social sciences.
Professional and scientific journals are replete with stud-
ies conducted from the perspective of the prevention scien-
tist. For example, a 1991 special issue of the AJCPpresents a
review of issues related to prevention science, including such
topics as validity, short-term versus long-term effects, and the
place of random assignment in community trials (Jansen &
Johnson, 1993). Also in the AJCP (Kellam, Koretz, &
Moscicki, 1999a, 1999b), recently published work from a
conference on Prevention Science held at Johns Hopkins
University in December 1994 includes: (1) results of school-
and community-based randomized field trials; (2) studies
of antecedent risk factors in the individual and social context;
and (3) designs for future prevention trials.
In contrast to the work of the prevention scientist, the
action researcher focuses upon understanding the commu-
nity, often the host for the prevention program, so as to
develop community-based and community-sensitive pro-
grams. Swampscott Conference participants recognized the
need to use community members as resources in the research
process. “The conference was stimulated by Reiff’s discus-
sion of the indigenous nonprofessional,” and researchers