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Is It Necessary to Discuss Person-Oriented Research in Community Psychology?

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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

A brief overview of the person orientation is provided. It is then argued that research in community psychology, similar to every other field in psychology, has mainly focused on variables, not individuals. Suggestions are provided for how the person orientation can be applied to understanding settings and environments as well as the theoretical and methodological contributions community psychologists can make to further person oriented methods.

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Notes

  1. This article is based on Cecilia Martinez-Torteya’s master’s thesis.

  2. A recent special issue of American Journal of Community Psychology contains two articles that point to two different methods that attempt to deal with the problem of non-linear relationships. These are Complex Adaptive Systems (see article by Parsons 2007) and systems dynamic modeling (see article by Hirsch et al. 2007). These techniques have been rarely adopted by community psychologists.

  3. The original five tenets of Bergman and Magnusson (1997) are items 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7.

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Acknowledgments

Alexander von Eye, Leonard Jason, and Cecilia Martinez-Torteya were kind enough to provide feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I would like to thank Belle Liang and Pratyusha Tummala-Narra for their beautiful, heartfelt introduction to my presidential address. And finally, my deepest gratitude to James Hansell, whose life’s work exemplifies, in profound and meaningful ways, the person-orientation and without whom my life’s work, especially over the last decade, would not have been possible.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    G. Anne Bogat

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  1. G. Anne Bogat
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Correspondence to G. Anne Bogat.

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Anne Bogat, G. Is It Necessary to Discuss Person-Oriented Research in Community Psychology?. Am J Community Psychol 43, 22–34 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9215-7

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