COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse Practicesmedia to disseminate key messages and local activities to promote interpersonal interaction. We drew fromfeminist theory, social exchange theory, theory of planned behaviour, and social cognitive theory and appliedsocial marketing approaches. The program was aimed at creating new community norms that denounce IPV,promoting more egalitarian attitudes and behaviours in interpersonal relationships, and encouraging bystandersto confront abusive behaviours.ChallengesDeveloping and implementing a theoretically-, empirically- and community-based IPV universal preventionprogram is filled with many challenges. Especially when working in an immigrant community, the paucity ofempirical data, untested applicability of behaviour change theories to the specific target community, and difficultytranslating certain Western concepts into the target language can be challenging. At the time we began ourproject, a large segment of the community members and leaders denied or minimized the seriousness of theproblem of IPV in their community. Thus, an additional major challenge was to find a way to address a topic thatis largely regarded as taboo. We used a wide range of participatory methods, intentionally and continuouslyinvolving community members, leaders and other stakeholders in various stages of the project. Theseparticipatory approaches embodied our commitment to the importance of developing socio-culturally relevant andsustainable IPV prevention strategies, which was untenable without meaningful participation of communitymembers, the very people whose wellbeing the project tries to promote.StrategiesOne concrete approach we used to ensure ongoing community input and feedback was the establishment of aCommunity Action Team (CAT). We recruited individuals who are diverse in age, immigration status, andeducational level. Having participated in an initial 40+-hour training and ongoing working meetings and additionaltraining sessions, CAT members played a central role in planning, development and implementation of theprevention campaign.Conducting formative research was another important way to incorporate community’s voices and experiencesinto the prevention campaign. We assessed community members’ and leaders’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs andbehaviours (KABBs) regarding IPV using multiple data collection methods, including focus groups, individualinterviews, and written/Web surveys. Respondents tended to define IPV narrowly, focusing on physical violence;deny or minimize the prevalence of IPV and its impact in their own community; and view IPV as a private matterrather than a community issue. In addition, among respondents there are varying degrees of tolerance and/orjustification of husband’s exertion of control over and use of violence against wives.Although the findings from the formative research were generally consistent with those of previous studies amongAsian and Asian Indians (Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996; McDonnell & Abdulla, 2001; Yoshihama, 2002,2009)(Abraham, 2002; Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996; Yoshihama, 2002b; Yoshioka, DiNoia, & Ullah, 2001), it helpedidentify additional critical factors to be addressed in the prevention campaign, such as the pervasiveness ofgossip; respondents repeatedly mentioned that although IPV is not discussed openly among community158