The stability of youth popular opinion leaders selected over time using social network analysis

Peer ambassador stories: formative qualitative research to enhance the reach of PrEP, HIV testing, and behavioral health treatments to LMSM in South Florida

Existing HIV prevention interventions, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and behavioral health treatments inadequately reach Latino men who have sex with men (LMSM) in the US. This study involved formative research to inform the content, design, and implementation of a scalable, low resource implementation strategy - peer ambassador stories - stories from peers to normalize using PrEP, HIV testing, and behavioral health treatment. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 LMSM to elucidate their content, design, and implementation preferences for peer ambassador stories. Men were asked about story prompts, story contributor characteristics, story platform features, design preferences, and recommendations for enhancing the adoption and use of the peer ambassador technology platform among LMSM. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed via rapid qualitative analysis. Qualitative analyses identified 14 themes within 4 pre-specified domains. Collectively, the themes unified around the central concept that technology-delivered peer ambassador stories require a personalized, relational, culturally relevant touch to be acceptable and appropriate for LMSM. This study suggests that disseminating peer ambassador stories using electronic platforms and audio/video formats may enhance the reach of services and if they are personalized, relational, and culturally relevant. Findings have broad implications for informing other peer-based strategies to mitigate HIV disparities among LMSM.

From parts to whole: Embracing systems science in community psychology

With our field's strong focus on context for understanding and acting on social problems, community psychologists have frequently elevated the importance of employing systems thinking and methods that help us to understand systems more effectively. As a result, community psychologists have adopted some methods from the interdisciplinary field of systems science. In this virtual special issue, we will compare how several of these approaches have been used in publications in the AJCP in the last 50 years. We identify differences in their popularity, implementation with communities, and how they create generative discussion in the field. We conclude by looking to the future to explore ways community psychology can deepen engagement with methods from systems science.

A Systematic Review of Systems Science Approaches to Understand and Address Domestic and Gender-Based Violence

Purpose

We aimed to synthesize insights from systems science approaches applied to domestic and gender-based violence.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review of systems science studies (systems thinking, group model-building, agent-based modeling [ABM], system dynamics [SD] modeling, social network analysis [SNA], and network analysis [NA]) applied to domestic or gender-based violence, including victimization, perpetration, prevention, and community responses. We used blinded review to identify papers meeting our inclusion criteria (i.e., peer-reviewed journal article or published book chapter that described a systems science approach to domestic or gender-based violence, broadly defined) and assessed the quality and transparency of each study.

Results

Our search yielded 1,841 studies, and 74 studies met our inclusion criteria (45 SNA, 12 NA, 8 ABM, and 3 SD). Although research aims varied across study types, the included studies highlighted social network influences on risks for domestic violence, clustering of risk factors and violence experiences, and potential targets for intervention. We assessed the quality of the included studies as moderate, though only a minority adhered to best practices in model development and dissemination, including stakeholder engagement and sharing of model code.

Conclusions

Systems science approaches for the study of domestic and gender-based violence have shed light on the complex processes that characterize domestic violence and its broader context. Future research in this area should include greater dialogue between different types of systems science approaches, consideration of peer and family influences in the same models, and expanded use of best practices, including continued engagement of community stakeholders.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10896-023-00578-8.

College Students' Engagement in Violence Prevention Discussions with Peers

The bystander intervention (BI) model recognizes a range of prosocial helping behaviors individuals can perform to support sexual and dating violence (S/DV) prevention efforts. Individuals can demonstrate a commitment to ending violence through proactive BI, such as participating in prevention initiatives or talking with peers about ways to keep safe, which are different than reactive BI behaviors when violence is underway. Given the anchoring of the BI model in Diffusion of Innovation Theory, which articulates the uptake of new behaviors throughout a population or community and the role of change agent aids in that process, investigating demographic, and other individual-level correlates, of proactive behaviors may help identify those students who are particularly positioned to help diffuse and normalize anti-violence behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine (1) the occurrence of students' engagement in peer discussions about violence prevention in the past year and (2) the correlates of reporting to have those discussions among university students in a cross-sectional study implemented on two campuses in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. Results showed that the most common discussion was talking to friends about being safe in dating relationships and the least common was talking with friends about participating in violence-prevention-related activities, with 66.2% and 22.5% having done so, respectively. Women, younger students, and those reporting to know a survivor of either DV or SV were more likely to report having discussions, compared to men, older students, and those not knowing a survivor. Additional relationships were detected between other individual characteristics, knowledge about violence/victimization, and climate-related variables but differed depending on whether participants participated in the DV or SV-related survey module. Findings suggest the need for BI training initiatives to emphasize proactive engagement and peer discussions, and that gender continues to be a robust indicator of violence-prevention actions.