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A systems framework for understanding social settings

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that attempts to change social settings have been hindered by lack of theoretical advances in understanding key aspects of social settings and how they work in a dynamic system. We present a systems framework for understanding youths’ social settings. We focus on three aspects of settings that represent intervention targets: social processes (i.e., patterns of transactions between two or more people or groups of people), resources (i.e., human, economic, physical, temporal resources), and organization of resources (i.e., how resources are arranged and allocated). We postulate that these setting aspects are in dynamic transaction with each other, resulting in setting outcomes. Discussion focuses on the implications of our theoretical framework for setting intervention.

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Notes

  1. In part, differences in observed effects between the Tennessee and the California initiatives are due to differences in research designs to assess observed effects. For our purposes, however, we focus on differences in the interventions themselves.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Bob Granger, Bob Pianta, Beth Shinn, Tom Weisner, and Hiro Yoshikawa for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

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  1. William T. Grant Foundation, 570 Lexington Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY, 10022, USA

    Vivian Tseng & Edward Seidman

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  1. Vivian Tseng
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  2. Edward Seidman
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Correspondence to Vivian Tseng.

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Tseng, V., Seidman, E. A systems framework for understanding social settings. Am J Community Psychol 39, 217–228 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-007-9101-8

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