Within the field of psychology, community psychology specifically challenges traditional ways of thinking by considering people as embedded in ecological systems. It also recognizes that the links between persons and settings may be as important as either factor alone. Many of the important writings in this field have been presented in the American Journal of Community Psychology, as such, theintellectual history of community psychology has been presented in this journal.

During the past quarter century, community psychologists have worked to make relevant contributions to human welfare in community settings and to effect social change. Working with and in schools, neighborhood organizations, religious institutions, social programs, and government agencies, the community psychologist has come to understand how social settings and social policy influence behavior and foster change that promotes individual health and well-being. Using a social ecological paradigm as their guiding framework, they focus on the interactions between persons and their environments, cultural diversity, and local empowerment for understanding organizational, community, and social change.

Community psychologists have relied on multiple methods of obtaining data but more often, they have had to develop new methodologies or adapt existing ones. These innovative methods have been recorded in the American Journal of Community Psychology throughout the years of its history and have changed the way that researchers in the field have gathered data. Some of the areas covered in this volume include:

- intervention;
- prevention research;
- ecological assessment; and
- culturally anchored research. This volume will be of interest to community, developmental, social and clinical psychologists, public health and behavioral medicine researchers, cultural intervention researchers, and community mental health and health workers.

Social settings have enormous power to promote or hinder positive youth development. Researchers and practitioners know a great deal about features of schools and programs for youth that affect development, but much less about how to transform settings to bring about these desirable features. This book shows how to harness the power of settings. It shifts the debate from simply enhancing youth outcomes at the individual level to improving the settings of youths' daily lives. The book offers researchers and practitioners blueprints for creating and changing influential settings including classrooms, schools, universities, out-of-school time programs, ethnic systems of supplementary education, and other community-based programs.
Leading scholars in psychology, education, human development, sociology, anthropology, economics, law, and public policy discuss a wide array of social change strategies, and describe how to measure key features of settings as a target and guide for change. The authors also demonstrate how larger social structures - such as school districts, community coalitions, community data resources - can support change. Many of the chapters describe ways to make settings work for all youth, including those marginalized by reason of race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. Toward Positive Youth Development will guide researchers, educators, administrators and policy makers to improve schools and youth programs for all of America's youth.

During the past quarter century, community psychologists have worked to make relevant contributions to human welfare in community settings and to effect social change. Working with and in schools, neighborhood organizations, religious institutions, social programs, and government agencies, the community psychologist has come to understand how social settings and social policy influence behavior and foster change that promotes individual health and well-being. Using a social ecological paradigm as their guiding framework, they focus on the interactions between persons and their environments, cultural diversity, and local empowerment for understanding organizational, community, and social change.

Community psychologists have relied on multiple methods of obtaining data but more often, they have had to develop new methodologies or adapt existing ones. These innovative methods have been recorded in the American Journal of Community Psychology throughout the years of its history and have changed the way that researchers in the field have gathered data.

This work contains original research from the first 25 years of the American Journal of Community Psychology, selected to reflect community psychology's rich tradition of theory, empirical research, action, and innovative methods. This volume will be of interest to community mental health workers, social science and social work researchers, health care professionals, policymakers, and educators in the fields of community and preventative psychology.

This two-volume handbook summarizes and makes sense of exciting intellectual developments in the field of community psychology. As a discipline that is considered a half century old in the United States, community psychology has grown in the sophistication and reach of theories and research. Reviewing the chapters of the APA Handbook of Community Psychology, the reader will readily notice several themes emerge. Community psychology's ideas are becoming increasingly elaborated; its theory, research and interventions more situated; and its reach in both thought and action, more expansive. Ideas that may have seemed much simpler when first proposed - for example, community, prevention and empowerment - have come to pose challenges, contradictions and opportunities initially unspecified and perhaps unimagined. Under the editorial direction of Meg A. Bond, Irma Serrano-Garcia, Christopher B. Keys, and Marybeth Shinn, with chapters authored by both senior and rising scholars, the APA Handbook of Community Psychology provides an indispensable and authoritative reference resource for researchers, instructors, students, practitioners, field leaders and life-long learners alike. This highly anticipated addition to the APA Handbooks in Psychology (R) series covers current knowledge and identifies the most pertinent sources of information in both the core and evolving literature. It highlights community psychology's emphasis on the synergistic relationship between research and action, and offers an international outlook, including chapters integrating perspectives from across cultures and contexts around the world.