Moos R H
Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Palo Alto, California, USA.
Am J Community Psychol. 1996 Feb;24(1):193-201. doi: 10.1007/BF02511887.
The contributions to this Special Issue illustrate research on several important types of environmental units, including psychiatric and substance abuse treatment programs, neighborhood block groups, and entire communities. They also exemplify alternative methodologies, such as assessing environments by relying on participants' appraisals, external observers' ratings, historical archives, and direct observation. I draw on these contributions and some of my own work to discuss four recurrent issues: (a) how to conceptualize environmental domains and dimensions; (b) how to understand environmental dynamics, that is, the interplay of environmental factors both within one setting and across settings; (c) how to comprehend the processes that link environmental factors to outcomes, especially with respect to the power and evanescence of environmental influence; and (d) how to use information about environments to monitor and improve them. Increased knowledge in these four areas is essential to help fulfill a major aim of community psychology: to understand social processes and improve intervention program outcomes.
本期特刊的文章展示了对几种重要环境单位类型的研究，包括精神科和药物滥用治疗项目、邻里街区组以及整个社区。它们还例证了替代方法，比如依靠参与者评估、外部观察者评分、历史档案以及直接观察来评估环境。我借鉴这些文章以及我自己的一些研究来讨论四个反复出现的问题：（a）如何对环境领域和维度进行概念化；（b）如何理解环境动态，即环境因素在一个环境内部以及不同环境之间的相互作用；（c）如何理解将环境因素与结果联系起来的过程，特别是关于环境影响的强度和短暂性；以及（d）如何利用有关环境的信息来监测和改善环境。在这四个领域增加知识对于帮助实现社区心理学的一个主要目标至关重要：理解社会过程并改善干预项目的结果。
