Helping in the Community: Behavioral Applications

During the late 1960s and the 1970s, behavioral applications expanded from individual programs and institutional projects to a wide variety of community problems and settings. These developments prompted the organization of an international conference on behavior modification in the community that was held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in July of 1976. Many of the presenters at that conference described original be- havioral programs in a variety of community settings that have not been published elsewhere. This book was prompted by that conference. Its purposes are to describe the updated conference proceedings and, with additional original contributions, to heuristically relate community psy- chology and applied behavior analysis. The first section presents an overview of the salient characteristics of community psychology, proposes a broad conceptualization of be- havioral community psychology, and provides an overview of the prom- ise that behavior modification holds for helping in the community. The papers in the next four sections describe the results of the application of behavior modification in the community-a collective statement on the current state of behavioral community intervention. These papers are organized around four main topics: "Facilitating Behavioral Community Development," "Helping People by Influencing Mediators and Sys- tems," "Helping Groups Live Together," and "Helping Individuals Help Themselves. " This organization stems from the broad conceptuali- zation of behavioral community psychology presented in the first sec- tion.