ranking institutional settings based on publications in community psychology journals

RANKING INSTITUTIONALSETTINGS BASED ONPUBLICATIONS IN COMMUNITYPSYCHOLOGY JOURNALS

Leonard A. Jason, Steven B. Pokorny, Mazna Patka,Monica Adams, and Taylor MorelloDePaul University

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Two primary outlets for community psychology research, the AmericanJournal of Community Psychology and the Journal of CommunityPsychology, were assessed to rank institutions based on publicationfrequency and scientific influence of publications over a 32-year period.Three specific periods were assessed (1973–1983, 1984–1994,1995–2004). Findings indicate that there were a large group ofinstitutions that published articles during these periods. Those academicinstitutions that had the most published articles as well as the largestinfluence, based on citations by other authors, were identified. Usingarchival data from the community psychology literature representsone approach for identifying those settings that made substantialcontributions to the development and growth of the field. © 2007 WileyPeriodicals, Inc.

The field of community psychology in the United States developed from an effort bysome psychologists in the 1960s to become more active in helping to solve some of thesocial and community problems that confronted our country during that turbulentperiod ~Cowen, 1973; Dalton, Elias, & Wandersman, 2001!. This perspective, firstexplicitly formulated in 1965 at a conference in Swampscott, Massachusetts ~Bennettet al., 1966!, stressed the need to emphasize prevention and widen the scope ofintervention to encompass supraindividual target levels. Those at the Swampscottconference agreed to call this new field community psychology, and it would be distinctfrom community mental health, as it would emphasize new roles for psychologists. Forexample, participant-conceptualizers would act as change agents for communities,developing prevention programs, advocating for community change, consulting withcommunity agencies, and collaborating with citizens. The Division of CommunityPsychology, of the American Psychological Association, was later founded in 1968,

Correspondence to: Leonard A. Jason, Center for Community Study, DePaul University, 990 West FullertonAvenue, Chicago, IL 60614-2458. E-mail: [email protected]

A R T I C L E

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 35, No. 8, 967–979 (2007)Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20206

with a focus on these new methods to promote mental health ~Iscoe, Bloom, & Spiel-berger, 1977!.

In 1975, the National Conference on Training in Community Psychology was heldin Austin, Texas, to examine different training models for students in the field ofcommunity psychology ~Iscoe et al., 1977!. Later called the Austin conference, par-ticipants concluded that there was no single definition of community psychology, andthat there were multiple models of training, including community, clinical–community, and community–clinical. Although there was a consensus that communitypsychology needed to develop its own knowledge base, it was also clear that this newfield would benefit from drawing upon advances in the other social and behavioralsciences. However, there was also a sense that although the ideology of communitypsychology emphasized prevention and modification of social systems, most commu-nity psychologists associated with mental health centers continued to focus more onclinical practice. The participants indicated a need for more social action and advo-cacy efforts to address poverty, racism, and sexism. One immediate outcome of thisconference was the establishment of a community–social psychology training programat the University of Puerto Rico ~Spielberger & Iscoe, 1977, p. 321!.

Since the Austin conference, the field of community psychology has continued toevolve and is now seen as one that emphasizes prevention over treatment, emphasizesstrengths and competencies over weaknesses, adopts an ecological perspective ~Kelly,1985, 1990!, values and respects diversity and differences, stresses empowerment ~Rap-paport, 1981!, emphasizes action research and social change, stresses collaborationwith other disciplines, focuses on interventions that build a sense of community ~Duffy& Wong, 2000!, stresses community-building and citizen participation ~Dalton, Elias, &Wandersman, 2001!, and supports interventions involving public policy ~Lorion, Van-denBos, & Iscoe, 1996!. Another conference held in Chicago, Illinois, in 1988 onresearch methods in community psychology called for “adventuresome research” thatwould better portray the complexities of communities and individuals ~Tolan, Keys,Chertok, & Jason, 1990!.

Some have argued that the field of community psychology contains some ideasthat were developed over a century ago in the settlement house movement, whichemerged during the height of the Progressive Era ~Levine & Levine, 1970!. The polit-ical zeitgeist does influence what is perceived as important in the social sciences. Asargued by Levine and Levine ~1992!, the dominant paradigms in the human servicesreflect the political climate in society. Changes in the social context are favored inprogressive periods, whereas more individually based approaches are emphasized inconservative periods. Clearly, it is important to understand historical trends as they doinfluence our ideas on how to develop helping services.

Over the past three decades, there have been several efforts to chronicle whetherthe theory and enumerated principles of the field of community psychology matchthe empirical work that has been published in its journals. The two leading journals,the Journal of Community Psychology ~JCP ! and the American Journal of Community Psy-chology ~AJCP !, were established in January of 1973. A content analysis of publishedarticles in JCP and AJCP from 1973 to 1977 found that community psychology over-lapped with other fields such as community mental health, public policy psychology,organizational psychology, and social psychology in terms of the purpose of the research,its participants, and the variables studied ~Lieberman & Dunlap, 1979!. Another contentanalysis of articles published in AJCP, JCP, the Community Mental Health Journal, andthe Journal of Applied Social Psychology from 1975 to 1978 found that community

Journal of Community Psychology DOI 10.10020jcop

968 • Journal of Community Psychology, November 2007

psychologists and community mental health professionals tended to implement tradi-tional individual or small group rather than community-level interventions ~McClureet al., 1980!. In a content analysis of AJCP from 1973 to 1987, Novaco and Monahan~1980! found a decreased concern for theory and an increased emphasis on individ-uals independent of their environments. Finally, Bernal and Enchautegui-de-Jesus~1994! examined AJCP and JCP from 1973 to 1992, and found that 79% of articles didnot include ethnic minorities in their samples. These archival analyses have providedhealthy feedback to the field, and identified shortcomings where the empirical basisof the field did not match the stated ideology.

Other studies have examined characteristics of the authors publishing in thesejournals. Lounsbury, Leader, Meares, and Cook ~1980! analyzed the content of 478articles from AJCP and JCP, and found that a majority of authors was affiliated with auniversity or college. Later, Speer, Dey, Griggs, Gibson, Lubin, and Hughey ~1992!conducted a review of empirical articles published in AJCP and JCP between 1984 and1988, and also found a majority of affiliations to be from a university or college.Martin, Lounsbury, and Davidson ~2004! examined a random sample of articles pub-lished between 1993 and 1998 in AJCP, and found that the majority of authors wereWhite men between the ages of 30 and 50. Together, these studies provide importantinformation about some of the characteristics of settings and authors publishing dur-ing specific segments of community psychology’s history. Unfortunately, we know littleabout the relative influence of settings that publish and disseminate this type ofresearch, as they have not been systematically documented or analyzed.

Various methods, in addition to examining the field’s journals, have been used tostudy the development of the field of community psychology. For example, Paul Toroexamined the history of community psychology by tracing students of individuals whofounded the field ~P. Toro, personal communication, March 24, 2005!. For some, thismethodology creates the impression of elitism because it focuses on a pedigree, andindividuals not trained by one of the founders might feel left out and marginalized.Other researchers have published collections of community psychology articles thathave been considered to be the most significant contributions to the field ~Revensonet al., 2002!, but it is unclear what empirical criteria were used to make these selec-tions. An alternative approach to better understanding the shaping and influentialcontributors to the field, one that avoids some of the problems alluded to above,would involve shifting the emphasis from individuals to settings. For example, onemight focus efforts to identify those settings that have been the most productive interms of published articles and citations by other researchers.

The present study evaluated the 32-year history of published material in the twomajor U.S. community psychology journals, JCP and AJCP. The intention of this archi-val analysis was to determine the relative contributions of institutions to the commu-nity psychology literature by rank ordering settings for productivity and influence. Inaddition, an effort was made to assess the publication productivity and influenceacross three periods of the history of the field of community psychology to documentchanges in settings over time.

METHOD

Sample

Information was obtained from every volume published in AJCP and JCP from 1973to 2004 consisting of 34 volumes of AJCP and 32 volumes of JCP. Information was

Ranking Institutional Settings • 969


referenced from 1,497 articles from AJCP and 1,421 articles from JCP. Articles in-cluded empirical and theory pieces, award addresses, and opinion pieces. The namesof all authors and their institutional affiliations were recorded for each publishedarticle.

The number of articles published by an institution was calculated as the sumof articles published within the specified period that had any author with the institu-tion’s affiliation. However, the institution received only one credit for the publicationeven if there were multiple authors on the publication with the same institutionalaffiliation.

The Social Science Citation Index ~SSCI; Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia, PA! wasused to establish an influence score for each institution. The SSCI indicates the num-ber of times a particular article was cited in other references found in over 1,700 ofthe world’s leading scholarly social sciences journals. The institutional influence scorewas calculated using several steps. First, the number of citations associated with eachof the 2,918 articles was identified by searching the SSCI based on the first author’sname, the journal in which it was published, year, and volume number. These scoreswere then summed for each institution based on the institutional affiliations of allauthors on every article published within the specified period.

Institutions were then rank ordered twice. The first time based on the numberof articles published, and the second based on the influence score within eachspecified period. When two or more institutions were tied, in terms of the num-ber of publications or the inf luence score, the mean was computed for theirranked positions and that mean value was assigned as the rank of each of the tiedinstitutions.

The analysis divided the journals into three periods: 1973 to 1983, 1984 to 1994,and 1995 to 2004. It is possible to categorize the history of the field of communitypsychology into three periods of time. During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, thefirst community psychology training programs in the field were launched, and manyof the most prominent principles of the field were developed ~i.e., consultation, para-professionals, prevention, ecology, sense of community, etc.!. Unfortunately, the com-munity psychology journals only began publishing in 1973, so it was not possible tocapture the field’s literature during the earliest period of the field–the 1960s. Duringthe mid-1980s to early 1990s, the field matured, with a stronger focus on primaryprevention, empowerment, community-participatory approaches, and qualitative research.In addition, during this period, new training programs emerged and became produc-tive. Finally, in the early 1990s to the present, the field has continued to mature assecond and third generations of community psychologists have become more prom-inent, and content within the field of community psychology began to be includedwithin other areas of psychology ~health, clinical, social psychology! and within otherfields ~education, nursing, etc.!.

There were a total of 1,132 institutions that published one or more articles between1973 and 2004; 545 between 1973 and 1983; 451 between 1984 and 1994; and 515between 1995 and 2004. We decided to list the top 40 settings in terms of number ofpublications over the entire 32-year period, as other researchers have also used the top40 as a criterion. For example, Matthiessen, Schwarz, and Find ~2002! described thetop 40 articles listed by Science Citation Index ~SCI; Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia,PA!. America’s oldest and most highly regarded precollege science competition alsolists the top 40 finalists ~Intel Science Talent Search Honors 40 Young Scientists asFinalists, 1999!.



RESULTS

Published Articles

Table 1 lists the top 41 institutions ~3.6% of the sample!, each of which published atleast 20 articles in the two community psychology journals over the 32-year period

Table 1. Top 41 Institutions’ Rankings and Number of Articles by Period (N 5 1132)

Overall1973–2004

Period 11973–1983

Period 21984–1994

Period 31995–2004

Rank Articles Institution Rank Articles Rank Articles Rank Articles

1 92 UCLA 2.5 32 2 39 7.5 222 87 Arizona State U. 4 25 1 40 7.5 223 86 U. Illinois, Chicago 11.5 16 4 31 1 394 82 U. Michigan 11.5 16 3 32 3 345.5 74 Vanderbilt U. 1 41 10 23 30 105.5 73 Michigan State U. 34 10 6.5 28 2 367 71 U. Rochester 2.5 32 14.5 18 9.5 218 67 U. Illinois, Urbana 16 15 6.5 28 5 249.5 65 Yale U. 5.5 23 11 22 11 209.5 65 U. Maryland, College Park 7 21 5 29 18 15

11 58 U. California, Berkeley 24 12 12 21 5 2512 57 DePaul U. 16 15 9 25 14.5 1713 56 Pennsylvania State U. 5.5 23 17 16 14.5 1714 52 New York U. 109 3 8 26 6 2315 49 U. South Carolina 11.5 16 13 20 22 1316.5 40 Rutgers U. 40.5 9 14.5 18 22 1316.5 40 U. Maryland, Baltimore 83.5 4 18.5 15 9.5 2118.5 37 State U. NY, Buffalo 11.5 16 16 17 80 418.5 37 U. Washington 34 10 23 12 18 1520 36 U. California, Irvine 16 15 20 14 40.5 721 34 U. Southern California 11.5 16 63 5 22 1322.5 32 U. Texas, Austin 11.5 16 23 12 80 422.5 32 Wayne State U. 46.5 8 26.5 11 22 1324 30 U. Virginia 40.5 9 18.5 15 48 626 29 Columbia U. 67 5 37 8 16 1626 29 Kent State U. 24 12 37 8 33.5 926 29 Loyola U., Chicago 40.5 9 28 10 30 1028 27 U. Arizona 8 17 30.5 9 339.5 129 26 Johns Hopkins U. 375 1 43 7 12.5 1830 25 Georgia State U. 375 1 49.5 6 12.5 1832 24 Indiana U., Bloomington 67 5 30.5 9 30 1032 24 NIMH 18.5 14 49.5 6 80 432 24 U. California, San Francisco 375 1 23 12 26.5 1134 23 Northwestern U. 51.5 7 26.5 11 61.5 535 22 U. Kansas 51.5 7 30.5 9 48 636.5 21 U. Chicago 18.5 14 145 2 61.5 536.5 21 U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill 24 12 792 0 33.5 939.5 20 U. Colorado, Boulder 24 12 80 4 80 439.5 20 U. South Florida 24 12 49.5 6 143.5 239.5 20 U. Vermont 34 10 37 8 143.5 239.5 20 Wilfrid Laurier U. 393 0 23 12 36.5 8



~78% of the 1,138 settings had only one or two published articles!. Several settings tiedfor the last position, so our ultimate number of settings was increased from 40 to 41.For settings with the same number of publications, we used a commonly used methodof ranking the programs with a mean score ~e.g., for the overall period, the StateUniversity of New York at Buffalo and University of Washington both had 37 publi-cations, and as they were the settings with the 18th and 19th most frequently pub-lished articles, they both received a rating of 18.5!.

In addition, ratings and number of published articles for each of the three periodsare included in this table. Some academic settings did appear within the top 41rankings during one of the three periods, but did not make it onto the list of the topoverall 41 programs over the 32-year period, so they are not included within this table.The table allows readers to view how rankings changed among the top 41 programsover the entire period. From inspecting the number of published articles, it is clearthat the numbers represent a somewhat linear increase with rank. It is clear from thistable that some institutions have increased in level of publication productivity overtime ~e.g., New York University, Johns Hopkins University, Georgia State University!,whereas others have decreased ~e.g., University of Arizona, University of Vermont,University of South Florida!.

We also categorized the settings that are listed in Table 1 with regard to whetherthey were publicly or privately funded. Of the top 41 schools, 76% ~31 out of 41! werepublicly funded. The vast majority of settings were in the United States, with only onein Canada ~Wilfrid Laurier University!. Among the 40 in the United States, 30% werelocated in the Midwest, 28% were located in the Northeast, 15% were located in theSoutheast, 15% were located in the West, and 10% were in the Rocky Mountain area~based on the five areas of the Society for Community Research and Action @SCRA#Regional Coordinators!.

Because there were so few international settings, we looked among the settingsbelow the top 41 and found the following settings publishing at least six articles overthe 32-year period: Tel-Aviv University ~N � 15!, Universidad Central de Venezuela~N � 9!, University of Manitoba ~N � 9!, Bar-Ilan University ~N � 8!, Ben-GurionUniversity ~N � 7!, Hebrew University ~N � 7!, University of Queensland ~N � 7!,Victory University of Technology ~N � 7!, Curtin University of Technology ~N � 7!,University of Witwatersrand ~N � 6!, and University of Toronto ~N � 6!.1 These find-ings indicate that universities outside the United States with the highest number ofpublished articles were located in Israel, Australia, Canada, Venezuela, and SouthAfrica.

We also inspected more applied settings ~nonuniversity or research centers! with4 or more articles, and found 11 articles from Brandon, Vermont ~authored by Fred-erick Thorne!; 7 from Capital District Psychiatric Center, Albany, New York; 6 arti-cles from DuPage County Mental Health Department in Wheaton, Illinois; and 4articles each articles from Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland

1The City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, Queensland University of Technology, University of Auckland, Uni-versity of Waikato, University of Wollongong, Victoria University, and Acadia University each had fourpublications. Dalhousie University, Edith Cowan University, Free University of Amsterdam, University duQuebec at Montreal, University of Guelph, University of Haifa, University of Hong Kong, University ofSouthern Queensland, University College London, Dalhousie University, Macquarie University, and Uni-versity of Sydney each had three publications. The University of Puerto Rico, which is part of the UnitedStates, had 13 publications.



Psychiatric Institute, Cleveland, Ohio; and Fort Logan Mental Health Center, Sheri-dan, Colorado.2

Inf luence

Table 2 provides the institutional influence scores of the top 41 settings overall ~thesame number as in Table 1!, and then for each of these settings, the rankings are alsoavailable during the three periods. Influence scores tend to be lower during the thirdand most recent period because there are fewer years available for which these articlescould be cited. In this listing of settings, it is clear that Arizona State University has thehighest overall ranking. In general, it appears that those settings that published themost articles, as is evident in Table 1, were also the settings that had the largestnumber of citations by other researchers. The top 10 schools noted in Table 2 weregenerally the top 10 schools listed in Table 1, with just a few exceptions.

We also categorized the settings that are listed in Table 2 with regard to whetherthey were publicly or privately funded. Of the top 41 schools, 66% ~27 out of 41! werepublicly funded. The entire top group of 41 settings was located in the United States.Among the 41 settings, 32% were located in the Northeast, 27% were located in theMidwest, 20% were located in the West, 15% were located in the Southeast, and 5%were located in the Rocky Mountain area.

We looked among the international settings, and below we list the top five settingsand their institutional influence scores over the 32-year period: Wilfrid Laurier Uni-versity ~249!; Tel-Aviv University ~142!; Ben-Gurion University ~110!; Victoria Univer-sity of Technology ~76!; and University of Manitoba ~61!.3 All five institutions werefrom either Canada, Israel, or Australia.

In terms of influence from applied settings, we also list the most cited appliedsettings over the 32-year period: Youth Reception and Correction Center, Yardville,New Jersey ~106!; Tri-City Community Mental Health Center, Fremont, California~95!; Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore, Maryland ~93!; Malcolm Bliss MentalHealth Center, St. Louis, Missouri ~82!; and Thresholds, Chicago, Illinois ~75!.4

DISCUSSION

Overall, the findings indicate that the publications in the two major community psy-chology journals represent a wide variety of settings. It is understandable that all settings

2 There were three articles each published from Bronx State Hospital, Bronx, New York; Father Flanagan’sBoys’ Home, Boys Town, Nebraska; Malcolm Bliss Mental Health Center, St. Louis, Missouri; Pathways toHousing, New York; Community Development Consultants, New York; Denver General Hospital, Denver,Colorado; Himmelman Consulting, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Philliber Research Associates, Mental HealthComplex, Tupelo, Mississippi; Mental Health Continuing Education Program, Harrisonburg, Virginia; Mich-igan Department of Mental Health, Lansing, Michigan; and National Asian American Psychology TrainingCenter, San Francisco, CA.3 The next five highest international institutions ranked by their total citations were University of Manitoba~61!, Freie Universitt Berlin ~58!, University of Negev ~58!, University of Western Ontario ~50!, UniversidadCentral de Venezuela ~47!, and York University ~47!. Although in the United States, the University of PuertoRico was cited 164 times.4 The next five highest applied settings ranked by their total citations were the Capital District PsychiatricCenter, Albany, New York ~74!; Milwaukee County Mental Health complex, Milwaukee, Minnesota ~71!;Washington State Mental Health Division, Olympia, Washington ~70!; Philliber Research Associates, Tupelo,Mississippi ~68!; and Association of Junior Leagues, New York ~63!.



within the top 41 were academic in nature, as this is where much of the empiricalresearch in our field is generated. It is also understandable that those settings thattend to publish the most articles also have the largest influence scores. In addition,the ratings over the three periods provide a history of certain settings, some ofwhich have become more prominent with publications over time. Clearly, these typesof findings provide readers a way of gauging the relative article productivity of

Table 2. Top 41 Institutions’ Rankings and Impact Score by Period (N 5 1132)

Overall1973–2004

Period 11973–1983

Period 21984–1994

Period 31995–2004

Rank Impact Institution Rank Impact Rank Impact Rank Impact

1 2646 Arizona State U. 1 1067 1 1372 5 2072 1571 U. Michigan 28.5 170 2 1054 1 3473 1516 UCLA 4 617 5 720 8 2004 1437 U. Illinois, Urbana 8 456 4 777 6 2045 1334 U. Rochester 2 772 12 418 16 1446 1257 U. South Carolina 15 303 3 825 21.5 1297 1094 U. Illinois, Chicago 22 226 6 641 3 2278 992 Vanderbilt U. 9 442 8 475 30.5 759 947 Yale U. 5 563 18 338 51.5 46

10 854 Indiana U., Bloomington 3 630 34 189 77.5 3511 835 U. Washington 13 359 20 309 13 16712 799 U. C., Berkeley 33 139 11 425 2 23513 770 U. Maryland, College Park 23 212 16 369 11 18914 748 Michigan State U 54 76 10 472 7 20115 744 New York U. 80 48 7 546 14 15016 712 Pennsylvania State U. 24 211 15 378 24 12317 695 Rutgers U. 44 94 9 473 23 12818 637 Fordham U. 6 562 90 62 176 1319 610 U. C., Irvine 17 290 22 302 135 1820 603 DePaul U. 31 152 19 336 25 11521 558 U. Maryland, Baltimore 165 19 13 407 19 13222 543 U. Virginia 16 296 26 216 87.5 3123 528 Columbia U. 26 190 30.5 199 17 13924 527 Stanford U. 14 358 41 159 200 1025 499 U. Southern California 36 132 24 266 27 10126 496 Auburn U. 12 368 51 124 291 427 485 Southern Illinois U. 50 80 14 399 252 628 484 U. Chicago 10 407 162 22 45.5 5529 470 U. Oregon 7 467 363 3 767.5 030 461 Loyola U., Chicago 65.5 66 30.5 199 10 19631 459 Tennessee State U. 11 376 70 83 767.5 032 422 U. Vermont 57.5 74 17 340 223 833 412 Johns Hopkins U. 277 9 29 204 9 19934 405 U. C., San Francisco 150 21 25 236 15 14835 389 U. Louisville 20 235 43 154 767.5 036 379 Northwestern U. 25 208 49 131 66.5 4037 364 U. Rhode Island 173 18 23 290 43 5638 357 U. Delaware 96.5 37 21 305 157 1539 343 Temple U. 30 157 55 111 30.5 7540 323 Bowling Green State U. 38.5 106 32 198 129 1941 318 U. of Utah 77.5 49 44 140 21.5 129



different settings. In addition, among the top settings in Tables 1 and 2, the majoritywas from public academic settings, and most was located in the Northeast andMidwest.

These ratings allow readers to see the relative productivity and influence of dif-ferent academic settings. The methodology employed also allows an objective approachto assessing the changes of productivity within settings across time. The data mightreflect either the programmatic emphasis or merely the continued work of indepen-dent investigators. The findings can support an institutional view, perhaps based onthe commitment by psychology departments to maintain eminence in communitypsychology through new hires for retiring faculty or those who have left. In addition,institutions serve as proxies for an individual or a group of individuals. Clearly, somesettings have attracted more community academics over time; consequently, theirproductivity and influence increased. In other settings, when a primary contributorhas left that setting and was not replaced with another community scholar, produc-tivity in those types of settings decreased. For example, the University of Rochester’sdecline in Table 2 from number two in Period 1 to number 16 in Period 3 is probablyrelated to Emory Cowen’s life and career as well as that psychology department’s lackof commitment to continuing the community psychology training after he left thatsetting. The history of a field is embedded within its publications, as they representone of the primary ways that a discipline disseminates its ideas.

The field of community psychology strives to foster egalitarian values; as a result,the field is modest and may even downplay efforts to rate the status of individuals andorganizations. It is possible that this tendency might be the reason its journals havenot been previously rated to evaluate the productivity of its settings. However, thelistings within Tables 1 and 2 have some practical value for the field of communitypsychology. For example, university administrators are often most interested in howtheir academic programs are rated, particularly with other comparable settings. Beingable to share the findings from Tables 1 and 2 with these types of administrators mighthelp settings consolidate or enhance their prestige, and the findings might be evenused to help garner additional resources. In addition, students and faculty within asetting might be able to take some pride in knowing that their setting has been listedamong the top settings or has moved up in rank over time in terms of productivity orinfluence. Finally, when programs attempt to recruit new students and faculty, thesefindings can be used to portray a setting as thriving and productive, and thereforeprovide individuals with an incentive to join the setting. Alternatively, for programsnot ranked as highly as desired, the findings could be used by programs to attract newindividuals to help invigorate and set future productivity goals.

Almost all settings listed in the tables were within the United States, and thisshould not be interpreted to indicate that the most important research in the field ofcommunity psychology is being published in the United States. Both journals havehad editors from the United States, are considered publications generating out of theUnited States, and as many of the editorial board members are from the UnitedStates; therefore, it is not surprising to see the high frequency and influence of U.S.authors. It might be useful for community psychology publications in other countriesto engage in similar archival research with journals from their countries, so that itwould be possible to better understand the publications of the field from an inter-national perspective. It does appear that when rankings below the top 41 are exam-ined, universities in Canada, Israel, and Australia generally have the highest numberof publications in the two U.S. community journals, and citations in the SSCI. West



Germany, Venezuela, and South Africa are also ranked high among the internationalsettings.

The fact that an institution publishes articles at a high frequency and these articlesare cited by other researchers, are only one indication of the significance of thematerial. It is clearly possible that some settings have scholars with fewer publicationsand secondary citations, but such settings could have been or can be very importantsites for the creation of critical knowledge for the field. It is also important to recog-nize that ideas and interventions from community practitioners typically are not pub-lished in academic outlets, and yet their work might be as important as anything thatis published in the two major community psychology journals. There is a need to findways to both access those contributions and to rate their importance to the field. It isvery possible that their contributions are published at lower frequencies ~below thetop 41!, or in other outlets, or disseminated by other means such as through InternetWeb sites. There are now technologies that allow an examination of how many timesa Web site or Internet tool is looked at by viewers, and in the future, these types ofdata might be very worthy of documenting to assess the influence of an idea or theory.

By 1975, there were 141 graduate programs offering some training in communitypsychology ~Meritt, Greene, Jopp, & Kelly, 1999!. Today, there are five types of grad-uate programs in the field of community psychology. There are 13 free-standingcommunity psychology programs, 12 community–clinical psychology programs, 7 com-munity psychology master’s programs, 7 interdisciplinary community psychology pro-grams, and 5 other community-related programs ~SCRA, 2005!. The present study didnot attempt to better understand the changes that have occurred in the communitytraining programs that existed in 1975, or how they evolved over the past 30 years. Toinvestigate this would have required a review of those 140 programs and an inspectionof their curricula and training missions, and this was not the focus of the currentstudy.

We did examine those programs in Tables 1 and 2 that were listed on the officialSCRA Web site ~see www.scra27.org0scraprograms.html! as providing a formal trainingconcentration or track in community or clinical–community psychology. We foundthat only 14 of the 41 programs ~34%! listed in Table 15 and only 13 of the 41programs ~32%! listed in Table 26 had a formal community psychology training pro-gram. When examining the top 20 programs in Tables 1 and 2, 50% ~N � 10! and 45%~N � 9!, respectively, had formal community psychology training programs. Thesefindings indicated that most of the academic programs listed in Tables 1 and 2 do nothave formal community psychology training programs, whereas this type of formaltraining is more likely to occur within the top 20 programs. These findings, however,should be interpreted with caution, as it is difficult to determine whether current orpast academic programs had a formal relationship with the field of community psy-chology. For example, it is very possible that some academic programs have someformal community psychology training, but are just not listed as a member within the

5 The 14 programs were Arizona State University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Vanderbilt University,Michigan State University, University of Illinois at Urbana, DePaul University, Pennsylvania State University,University of South Carolina, Rutgers University, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Wayne StateUniversity, University of Virginia, Georgia State University, and Wilfrid Laurier University.6 The 13 programs were Arizona State University, University of Illinois-Urbana, University of South Caro-lina, University of Illinois at Chicago, Vanderbilt University, Michigan State University, Pennsylvania StateUniversity, Rutgers University, DePaul University, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, University ofVirginia, Bowling Green State University, and University of Utah.



formal SCRA Web site listing training programs. In addition, some community train-ing programs were once active, but became disbanded during the periods listed inTables 1 and 2 ~e.g., University of Texas, State University of New York–Buffalo, Uni-versity of Michigan!. Finally, several academic programs had one or more prominentcommunity psychologists who mentored students in the field of community psychol-ogy, but these settings never had a formal community psychology training program orcurricula. Many of these settings did provide rich opportunities for training in thecommunity psychology field.

It was not the intent of the present investigation to use the findings to eitherdocument the current status of community psychology as a scientific or professionaldiscipline or to explore whether there has been a cooptation of the field into otherareas of psychology or even other disciplines. For example, it is no longer unusual tofind articles in clinical, public health, education, and nursing journals that refer tocommunity-participatory research, empowerment, and an ecological perspective.Although these developments have occurred, the present study is not able to indicatewhether these developments have affected the field either positively or negatively. Inother words, rather than attempting to assess whether the field of community psy-chology has actually declined, stabilized, or expanded, the more limited objectives forthis article were to list those settings that have been most active in publishing, to assesshow often those articles have been cited, and to examine trends over time. Otherinvestigators might be able to better address these larger issues by using our dataalong with other data sets, such as those documenting the existence of community-content articles in noncommunity articles, or documenting the expansion or declineof training programs and graduates of such programs. As with most research, thisstudy raised at least as many questions as it answered. It is hoped that this article willbe just one of many that researchers in our field will contribute to in the next fewyears, as scholars try to better understand the evolution of the field of communitypsychology.

This study did not list the number of unique authors contributing to the literaturefrom each institution during each period. Another study will focus on the individualauthors of articles in the 30-year history of community psychology, and each of thesearticles are unique; with the current study dealing with settings, and a subsequentstudy dealing with authors. It is not possible to cover all important topics in one articlegiven the richness of literature archives in the community psychology journals. Cer-tainly, other investigators will have other perspectives and ideas for analyzing datafrom these types of archival sources to better understand the field of communitypsychology.

In summary, archival data are a rich source to learn about the creation anddissemination of knowledge for particular fields. In the present study, over a 32-yearperiod, settings were examined for publishing frequency and influence of communitypsychology articles. It is not surprising that those settings that have the strongesttraining programs in clinical–community and community psychology are highly rankedin both Tables 1 and 2. However, it is also true that some settings that are less wellknown for the graduate-level community training programs, such as the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan, are extremely highly ranked.The findings indicate that there are many extremely productive settings publishingcommunity research, and the relative nature of their productivity and influence canbe rated, and these ratings do change over time. Evaluating the published literature ofour field represents an important avenue for better understanding those settings



where much of the theory and research of the field of community psychology in theUnited States is generated.

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ranking institutional settings based on publications in community psychology journals

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