cac.ophony.org

The American Psychological Association’s Science Directorate has just published an article by Marguerita Lightfoot on the potential of electronic communication in the context of psychological interventions. Given many adolescents’ preferences for communicating via the internet over face-to-face interaction, researchers have found that young people may respond more positively to behavioral interventions conducted over the web compared to more traditional interpersonal and group-based models. E-interventions may be especially beneficial when therapies are focused on issues that are hard to talk about, such as the sexual risk intervention reported in this article.

These innovations in psychological practice and research represent interesting and effective uses of the principles of e-learning outside of the classroom in important applied contexts.