Research Core Small Project B- Organizational Networks:

• Focus on organizational networks, how their relationships change, how their approaches to youth violence prevention evolve, and how resources for youth violence prevention services change over time as they collaborate with the NUPACE.

• Propose an annual survey and interview of a representative from each organization in the target area over three years.

Douglas D. Perkins, Principal Investigator

Abstract- Dr. Douglas D. Perkins, along with Drs. Kimberly Bess and Paul W. Speer in the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, will conduct a three-year study monitoring and analyzing changes in the network of nonprofit organizations and public agencies addressing youth violence in Nashville. They will focus on (1) organizational relationships at the city level, (2) the external networks of each of 12 middle schools participating in a bullying and violence prevention experiment, and (3) change in the resources each organization devotes to youth violence prevention and in the approaches taken, with particular attention to ones that are strengths-based, primary preventive, empowering, and focused on changing root causes of violence in the community. 

Dr. Perkins is a community, environmental, and applied social psychologist and founding Director of the Ph.D. Program in Community Research & Action at Vanderbilt. He has researched and published on a wide range of topics, including adult and adolescent civic participation and empowerment, community and organizational change and development, and crime, fear, and the physical environment of urban neighborhoods. He directs the interdisciplinary Center for Community Studies http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/ccs.