Abstract
We present a qualitative case study where we used four principles of ecological theory from community psychology as a template to assess the dynamics about how a preventive community intervention was transacted in eight communities in Victoria, Australia. The principles were cycling of resources, interdependence, adaptation, and succession. Ecological thinking focuses on key resources in communities. That is, the people, events, and settings that are the foundations of thinking about communities as systems. The data set consists of field diaries kept by and serial interviews with nine community development workers over a 2-year period. We found that the analysis highlighted a process-oriented way of representing the intervention, one that sees beyond the intervention's technical components (or packaged elements) to the complexities of the cultural and political change processes occurring beneath. The value of this is the attention focussed on likely project sustainability.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to the CDOs: Wendy Arney, Deborah Brown, Kay Dufty, Serena Everill, Annie Lanyon, Melanie Sanders, Leanne Skipsey, Jennifer Stone, and Scilla Taylor for their willingness to engage with us and reflect on the experience of keeping diaries. It was a privilege to be let inside their practice worlds.The PRISM research trial team is Judith Lumley, Rhonda Small, Stephanie Brown, Lyn Watson, Jane Gunn, Wendy Dawson, and Creina Mitchell. Our thanks to them for the opportunity to participate as collaborators.We also wish to thank Ed Trickett whose work in ecological theory we drew on heavily for this paper, and for his comments on an earlier draft.The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia. PH is a Senior Scholar of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Canada.
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Hawe, P., Riley, T. Ecological Theory in Practice: Illustrations From a Community-Based Intervention to Promote the Health of Recent Mothers. Prev Sci 6, 227–236 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-005-0008-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-005-0008-z