Regional sprawl is a pressing concern of a community organization in a growing region of Northern Colorado. This thesis is an action research project that empirically analyzes population and housing characteristics, over time, in the three counties where the organization members reside. Beginning with a review of sprawls definitions, methods for measuring sprawl, and purported effects of the phenomenon, this thesis uses factors associated with sprawl to designate disaggregated geographic areas based on their association (or lack of association) with sprawl. Multivariate analyses of the population and housing characteristics are then carried out. The results lead to questions of segregation and displacement, based on race and class. Additional analysis of data follows, along with a brief case study of a community of low-income residents in the Front Range. Conclusions include the fact that sprawl is an engine for the elimination of affordability, and segregation by class and race. Recommendations are made for actions that might lead to changes in local and regional patterns of community development.

Collaborations are increasingly looked to for the resolution of social problems, in the establishment of market dominance on local and global levels, and within organizations as a method for increasing efficacy. Generally power and trust have been seen as critical elements to successful collaborations. However, in community contexts collaborations must often be preceded by community involvement. Using, correlations, hierarchical multiple regressions and a MANCOVA this article examines the relationship between coercive power, trust, and community involvement at multiple levels of analysis. Coercive power and trust were significantly and negatively correlated with each other. The trust variables were positively and significantly correlated with each other. They were trust in neighbors at the individual level, aggregate trust in neighbors at the community level, and trust in community organizations in which respondents were most involved. Trust in neighbors at the individual level and trust in community organizations were found to have a significant influence on community involvement. Trust in neighbors at the community level did not have a significant influence on community involvement. Respondents beliefs about how coercive power worked in their community did not have a significant influence on community involvement.

This organizational case study is concerned with the potential of human service organizations to go beyond ameliorative service provision to help change harmful social conditions. In this dissertation, I lay out a conceptual framework contrasting ameliorative and transformative human service approaches and follow one community-based organizations attempt to shift paradigms towards more transformative action. I describe the substantive changes this organization experienced as a result of this two-year change process as well as the factors that facilitated and constrained change. In this two-year change effort, I was an active participant and documented the process through observation as well as interviews and focus groups with staff, board members, and external partners. I learned that the organization made substantial changes in philosophy, shared purpose, and internal and external practices and that there were ripple effects in the community. Additionally, changes were observed in individual beliefs and individual and team practices. In sum, initial organizational conditions, clear change messages, internal and external agents of change, enabling structures, a dialogical learning process, and supportive organizational and community contexts facilitated the change process. This case teaches us that this type of transformation in human service organizations is possible.

This thesis examines the case of New Community Church, a digital film made by the author, from the perspective of ethnographic research. The case study shows how ethnographic process involves movement from a formative theory about a subject, into the field to collect anecdotal research data, about that subject, and finally to a grounded theory based on that data, which is in turn presented to an audience. In the case study it is shown that the authors filmmaking process follows all parts of this process, and the argument is made that the process should thus be considered ethnographic research.

This study examines factors related to employee attrition in a state social service organization (SSSO) that administers welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 132 former SSSO employees. Qualitative analyses found that informants reported insufficient resources to do their jobs, inconsistent or inadequate training experiences, negative perceptions of the organizational culture and management (e.g. minimal recognition and inadequate support for professional growth or innovation), and typically positive perceptions of co-worker relationships during their tenures at the SSSO. To examine the relative impact of these factors and background variables (age, race, office location, and position) on duration of employment, a multiple linear regression was conducted. Age, office location, position, and perceptions of organizational culture significantly predicted duration of employment (F (7,123) = 24.19, p < .001, R2 = .56). Findings suggest that organizational culture may be an important change target for retaining workers in SSSOs.

Empirical investigations that examine mortgage default tend to frame studies with theory that emphasizes individual financial factors and minimizes ecological factors, which may influence defaulters' opinions of their homes as investments. While recent qualitative work has elucidated the emotional and psychological impacts of foreclosure, these investigations have not focused on the ways that neighborhood characteristics may affect these trends. This study of two neighborhoods in Nashville, TN addresses these gaps. A Ward's cluster analysis grouped high-foreclosure census tracts into neighborhoods with distinct foreclosure risk-factors based on structural characteristics and environmental stressors. Interviews with defaulters from the two neighborhoods with the highest differences in risk-factors illuminate informants' opinions of homeownership as an investment and further solidify how the distinct attributes of these neighborhoods relate to individual and collective opinions about local housing markets. The idea of an ecology of despair and ethnocentric attitudes are discussed.

This research strives to tell a new story regarding the social production of health by focusing on the relations of power influencing food access and related health conditions. This new story begins by challenging existing tools used to understand the publics health and offers a new theory-methods package, materialist praxis, as means for activating population health perspectives and for materializing praxis-oriented research. I then apply a materialist praxis research approach to transform three Boys and Girls Clubs in Nashville, Tennessee from youth-serving organizations to farmers markets. This participatory, situated, reflective, and materialized research process provided an opportunity for children, youth, and adults to author a discourse of resistance and possibility with respect to pressing health inequities such as obesity and food insecurity. Through performances in and to space, this research also provided opportunities for uncovering the spatially, temporally, and socially constructed boundaries influencing food access. These boundaries combine to make real, fresh, and good foods foods considered to be healthier than and superior to foods described as bad, rotten, and junk inaccessible to many people residing in socially marginalized locations. Data analysis also depicted a nuanced understanding of food access by focusing on the financial and time costs influencing access. The results of this study reveal that the politics of food access are complex and intersectional but nevertheless discernable and most importantly changeable. This dissertation concludes by exploring how this materially and community-based process of research facilitated the re-creation of relationships between food and food practices by transforming social structures and, in turn, human agents. I also explore how the relations of power influencing food access are intricately connected to the production and reproduction of health disparities more broadly, and argue for the use of materialist praxis in future research focused on the social production of health as well as for the development of social change efforts focused on redressing unequal and unjust relations of power influencing access to food.

Citizen participation in neighborhood planning has become commonplace, but the process and resulting use of the input varies widely across projects. Literature on participatory planning suggests theoretical approaches to inform the structure of the process, as well as highlighting many of the issues and challenges that have become a part of participatory planning projects. This study examines a participatory neighborhood planning process in a mid-sized Southeastern U.S. city. The neighborhood is located near the citys central business district, and includes within its boundaries several service providers to the homeless in addition to a number of local businesses. The process involved a series of community meetings organized by a partnership between the local housing authority and a local non-profit planning agency. Business and property owners, homeless service providers, and homeless individuals attended meetings and provided input to inform the future development of the area. The process and results of these meetings, as well as interviews with participants, were analyzed to determine 1) the differences between groups in terms of goals for the neighborhood, 2) how those differences were resolved in the final plan, 3) how these final decisions were made, and 4) group differences in perception of the process. The results indicate that key differences existed between groups in their perception of the process and outcomes, but overall some consensus was reached.

Caregiver strain is a complex phenomenon with the potential to have a deleterious effect on caregivers ability to perform their caregiving duties. Previous research has suggests that differences in race influence caregivers reported level of strain, with African Americans tending to report lower levels of strain than their Caucasian counterpart. The present study examines racial differences in and measurement-related issues regarding caregiver strain, as measured by the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (Brannan, Heflinger, & Bickman, 1997), as well as the contribution of caregiver substance use and mental health problems to strain. Regression analysis was used to examine objective and subjective caregiver strain outcomes collected from Medicaid family caregivers (N = 1089) of children with emotional and behavioral problems from four sites (New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee/Mississippi). Selection of explanatory variables was guided primarily by the Double ABCX Model of adaptation. Propensity score methods were used to minimize confounds among race, demographic variables, and ABCX constructs. The propensity score adjustment strategies limit comparison groups and stratify on the propensity score to balance observed risks between African Americans (n = 414) and Caucasians (n = 675). Ordinary least squares regression results using the unadjusted covariates showed that African American caregivers reported less strain than Caucasians. However, after using propensity score analysis, African American caregivers with similar risk profiles to Caucasian caregivers were shown to report similar levels of caregiver strain. Although there were no differences in perceptions by race, caregivers with higher levels of self-reported mental health problems reported more strain; and caregivers substance abuse problems were not a significant predictor of strain for African Americans or Caucasians. Results from this study provide evidence that perceptions of caregiver strain when caring for a child with emotional and behavioral problems are similar for African Americans and Caucasians when differences in observed covariates are controlled, demonstrating that caregiver strain may be universal among U.S. caregivers. These results warrant additional study to determine if these differences are true of other child and adolescent populations.

This study is a response to the recent global re-framing of domestic violence as a preventable social problem, calling for prevention-oriented efforts throughout the different levels of our societies, or social ecology. This research investigates if existing responses to domestic violence currently occur throughout social ecologies, and to what extent efforts are prevention oriented. This is achieved through the undertaking of a case study of a particular community in Scotland, and the broader social ecology of which the community is a part. Through a collaborative investigation with expert community members, the study explores how domestic violence is responded to throughout this social ecology. Over 90 responses to domestic violence were identified and are discussed. Each response was found to operate in one of six major sectors of response, Governmental, Non-Governmental, Criminal Justice, Health, Housing or Social Services. Most responses stemmed from the Governmental and Criminal Justice sectors. Prevention of domestic violence was found to be a key objective of the existing responses, but few, in practice, were primary prevention efforts. The perspectives of key stakeholders on the existing efforts are engaged throughout. Local community efforts to respond to domestic violence were found to be an asset throughout the social ecology, and are presented as a model. Key findings include the invisibility of men across efforts to tackle domestic violence, the benefit of engaging the expertise of those who have experienced domestic violence, and the need for responses to more realistically meet the needs of those living with violence.