Exposure to violence,substance use,and neighborhood context

Adolescent exposure to violence and substance use are both public health problems, but how neighborhood context contributes to these outcomes is unclear. This study uses prospective data from 1416 adolescents to examine the direct and interacting influences of victimization and neighborhood factors on adolescent substance use. Based on hierarchical Bernoulli regression models that controlled for prior substance use and multiple individual-level factors, exposure to violence significantly increased the likelihood of marijuana use but not alcohol use or binge drinking. There was little evidence that community norms regarding adolescent substance use influenced rates of substance use or moderated the impact of victimization. Community disadvantage did not directly impact substance use, but the relationship between victimization and marijuana use was stronger for those in neighborhoods with greater disadvantage. The results suggest that victimization is particularly likely to affect adolescents’ marijuana use, and that this relationship may be contingent upon neighborhood economic conditions.     

SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS ON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

Research into the effects of neighborhood characteristics on children’s behavior has burgeoned in recent years, but these studies have generally adopted a limited conceptualization of the spatial and temporal dimensions of neighborhood effects. We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and techniques of spatial data analysis to examine how both the socioeconomic characteristics of extralocal neighborhoods—neighborhoods surrounding the immediate neighborhood of residence—and the duration of exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout the childhood life course influence the likelihood of graduating from high school. Among blacks and whites, socioeconomic advantage in the immediate neighborhood increases the likelihood of completing high school, but among whites higher levels of socioeconomic advantage in extralocal neighborhoods decrease high school graduation rates. Extralocal neighborhood advantage suppresses the influence of advantage in the immediate neighborhood so that controlling for extralocal conditions provides stronger support for the neighborhood effects hypothesis than has previously been observed. Exposure to advantaged neighborhoods over the childhood life course exerts a stronger effect than point-in-time measures on high school graduation, and racial differences in exposure to advantaged neighbors over the childhood life course help to suppress a net black advantage in the likelihood of completing high school.     

Girls’ self-efficacy in the context of neighborhood gender stratification

Scholars have linked neighborhood characteristics to self-efficacy, but few have considered how gender factors into this association. We integrate literature on neighborhoods, gender stratification, and self-efficacy to examine the association between women's relative resources among neighborhood residents and adolescents' self-efficacy. We hypothesize that girls report more self-efficacy when they reside in neighborhoods where women have more socioeconomic resources relative to men. We test this hypothesis using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and the 1990 Census. Results from multilevel regression models with gender-interacted effects indicate the neighborhood level of women's relative resources was not associated with boys' self-efficacy. However, girls reported higher self-efficacy when women's relative resources in their neighborhoods were greater. This association persisted after including potential individual- and neighborhood-level confounding variables. Our study underscores the importance of attending to gendered processes when understanding how neighborhoods impact youth.     

Differential investments and opportunities: How do neighborhood conditions moderate the relationship between perceived housing discrimination and social capital?

Though the adverse consequences of perceived housing discrimination have been documented, little is known about whether such experience undermines one's social capital in a neighborhood and even less is about whether and how this relationship is altered by neighborhood features. We proposed a framework that simultaneously considers within-individual and between-neighborhood processes. We applied multilevel structural equation models to data from Philadelphia (n = 9987) and found that (a) perceived housing discrimination was negatively associated with one's social capital even after other confounders were considered, (b) this negative association could be partly explained by the proliferated daily stress and anxiety mechanisms, (c) differential exposures to neighborhood social disadvantage accounted for the variation in social capital across neighborhoods, and (d) the adverse association between perceived housing discrimination and social capital could be attenuated by neighborhood stability. The findings suggested that appropriate interventions should buffer the negative association of perceived housing discrimination with social capital.     

Underage drinking, alcohol sales and collective efficacy: Informal control and opportunity in the study of alcohol use

Underage drinking among American youth is a growing public concern. However, while extensive research has identified individual level predictors of this phenomenon, few studies have theorized and tested the effect of structural social forces on children’s and youths’ alcohol consumption. In an attempt to address this gap, we study the effects of residential environments on children’s and youths’ underage drinking (while accounting for personality and familial processes). Integrating informal social control and opportunity explanations of deviance, we first suggest that while neighborhood collective efficacy prevents adolescents’ underage drinking, individuals’ access to local alcohol retail shops encourages such behavior. Focusing on the interactive effects of communal opportunities and controls, we then suggest that high presence of alcohol outlets and sales in the neighborhood is likely to increase youths’ probability of alcohol consumption in the absence of communal mechanisms of informal social control. We test our theoretical model using the unprecedented data design available in the PHDCN. Results from a series of multilevel logit models with robust standard errors reveal partial support for our hypotheses; specifically, we find that alcohol sales in a given neighborhood increase adolescents’ alcohol use. In addition, while the direct effect of collective efficacy is insignificantly related to children’s and youths’ alcohol consumption, our models suggest that it significantly attenuates the effect of local alcohol retailers and sales on underage drinking.     

Conflicting views on elder care responsibility in Japan

I examine the attitudinal ambivalence created by conflicting social expectations regarding parent-child devotion, filial obligation and family membership, and gender norms in a national population of Japanese adults. I ask: in a context of rapidly changing family and elder care norms, how do different beliefs and attitudes overlap and conflict and how are they related to elder care preferences? I analyze data from the 2006 Japanese General Social Survey and use Latent Class Analysis to identify latent groups in the population defined by their beliefs and examine the relationship between class membership and elder care preferences. I found variation in the population with respect to the measured beliefs as well as a relationship between patterns of beliefs and choice of elder caregiver. I found conflicting expectations regarding elder care responsibility in one latent class and this class also expressed elder care preferences that conflict with at least some of their strongly held beliefs.     

The impact of childhood neighborhood disadvantage on adult joblessness and income

Research on residential inequality focuses heavily on adult economic outcomes as crucial components of the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Yet, empirical evidence on whether youth neighborhoods have a lasting impact on adult economic outcomes at the national level is scarce. Further, we know little about how youth neighborhood effects on adult economic outcomes manifest. This study uses 26 years (14 waves) of restricted panel data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY Children and Young Adults cohorts – data that have never been used to analyze long-term neighborhood effects – to examine whether youth neighborhood disadvantage impacts adult economic outcomes through sensitive years in childhood, teen socialization, duration effects, or cumulative effects. Sibling fixed effects models that net out unobserved effects of shared family characteristics suggest that youth neighborhood disadvantage increases joblessness and reduces income in adulthood. However, exposure across specific developmental stages of youth does not appear to act as a significant moderator while sustained exposure yields pernicious effects on adult economic outcomes. Moreover, these results are robust to alternative variable specifications and cousin fixed effects that net out potentially unobserved confounders, such as the inheritance of neighborhood disadvantage across three generations.     

Perceptions as the crucial link? The mediating role of neighborhood perceptions in the relationship between the neighborhood context and neighborhood cohesion

This study examines the effects of neighborhood racial in-group size, economic deprivation and the prevalence of crime on neighborhood cohesion among U.S. whites. We explore to what extent residents' perceptions of their neighborhood mediate these macro-micro relationships. We use a recent individual-level data set, the American Social Fabric Study (2012/2013), enriched with contextual-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2010) and employ multi-level structural equation models. We show that the racial in-group size is positively related to neighborhood cohesion and that neighborhood cohesion is lower in communities with a high crime rate. Individuals' perceptions of the racial in-group size partly mediate the relationship between the objective racial in-group size and neighborhood cohesion. Residents’ perceptions of unsafety from crime also appear to be a mediating factor, not only for the objective crime rate but also for the objective racial in-group size. This is in line with our idea that racial stereotypes link racial minorities to crime whereby neighborhoods with a large non-white population are perceived to be more unsafe. Residents of the same neighborhood differ in how they perceive the degree of economic decay of the neighborhood and this causes them to evaluate neighborhood cohesion differently, however perceptions of neighborhood economic decay do not explain the link between the objective neighborhood context and neighborhood cohesion.     

Everybody's Doin' It (Right?): Neighborhood Norms and Sexual Activity in Adolescence

A neighborhood’s normative climate is linked to, but conceptually distinct from, its structural characteristics such as poverty and racial/ethnic composition. Given the deleterious consequences of early sexual activity for adolescent health and well-being, it is important to assess normative influences on youth behaviors such as sexual debut, number of sex partners, and involvement in casual sexual experiences. The current study moves beyond prior research by constructing a measure of normative climate that more fully captures neighborhood norms, and analyzing the influence of normative climate on behavior in a longitudinal framework. Using recently geo-coded data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), we analyze the effect of normative climate on adolescents’ sexual behaviors. Results indicate that variation in neighborhood normative climates increases adolescents’ odds of sexual debut and casual sex, and is associated with their number of sex partners, even after accounting for neighborhood structural disadvantage and demographic risk factors.     

Racial diversity, minority concentration, and trust in Canadian urban neighborhoods

Using a sample of 42,329 respondents nested within 4254 Canadian urban neighborhoods, this study demonstrates the conceptual and empirical importance of making a distinction between neighborhood racial diversity and minority concentration, and examines how each is uniquely associated with trust. Our analysis shows that at a given level of racial minority concentration, Whites are more trusting when their minority neighbors are more evenly distributed across racial minority groups. Meanwhile, Whites are less trusting as the neighborhood share of racial minorities increases. Overall, the effect of racial minority concentration tends to prevail over that of racial diversity.     

Effects of neighborhood walkability on healthy weight: assessing selection and causal influences

Studies that examine the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and weight are limited because residents are not randomly distributed into neighborhoods. If associations are found between neighborhood characteristics and weight in observational studies, one cannot confidently draw conclusions about causality. We use data from the Utah Population Database (UPDB) that contain body mass index (BMI) information from all drivers holding a Utah driver license to undertake a cross-sectional analysis that compares the neighborhood determinants of BMI for youth and young adults. This analysis assumes that youth have little choice in their residential location while young adults have more choice. Our analysis makes use of data on 53,476 males and 47,069 females living in Salt Lake County in 2000. We find evidence of residential selection among both males and females when BMI is the outcome. The evidence is weaker when the outcomes are overweight or obesity. We conclude that studies that ignore the role of residential selection may be overstating the causal influence of neighborhood features in altering residents’ BMI.     

Life events,genetic susceptibility,and smoking among adolescents

Although stressful life events during adolescence are associated with the adoption of unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, both social circumstances and physical traits can moderate the relationship. This study builds on the stress paradigm and gene–environment approach to social behavior by examining how a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR moderates the effect of life events on adolescent smoking. Tests of interaction hypotheses use data from the Family Transitions Project, a longitudinal study of 7th graders followed for 5 years. A sibling-pair design with separate models for the gender composition of pairs (brothers, sisters, or brother/sister) controls for unmeasured family background. The results show that negative life events are significantly and positively associated with smoking. Among brother pairs but not other pairs, the results provide evidence of gene–environment interaction by showing that life events more strongly influence smoking behavior for those with more copies of the 5-HTTLPR S allele.     

The role of parenthood in shaping the gender wage gap – A comparative analysis of 26 European countries

We use cross-national data on 26 EU countries to estimate how parenthood contributes to the gender wage gap, and assess how institutional elements affect this relationship. We find that irrespective of cultural norms and policies, fathers receive a wage premium, which increases the gender gap. Motherhood gaps vary across countries. The highest gaps are seen in Eastern European countries, where policies and norms lead to long absences from work. Moderate to small penalties are found in Continental Europe, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries, alongside higher maternal employment. No motherhood penalties are found for Southern EU countries, where mothers return to work quickly or exit the labor market indefinitely.     

Using small data to interpret big data: 311 reports as individual contributions to informal social control in urban neighborhoods

Informal social control is considered a vital component of the well-being of urban communities. Though some argue that the actions that constitute this social process are often said to reflect territoriality, little else is known about how individuals contribute to it. The current study leverages a database of over 600,000 requests for government services received by the city of Boston, MA's 311 system as a way to answer such questions, focusing particularly on reports of issues in the public space arising from incivilities. In order to establish construct validity for the “big data” of the 311 system, they are combined with the “small data” of a survey of 311 users, permitting the simultaneous analysis of objective reporting behaviors with self-report attitudes. The analysis occurs in two parts. First, reporting of incivilities is distinguished behaviorally from reporting public issues arising from natural deterioration, and people are found to specialize in one or the other. Second, the survey is used to test whether the reports are a reflection of territoriality. Reports of incivilities were unique in their association with a desire to enforce local social norms. They were also associated with a second territorial motivation to benefit the community. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Why do Asian Americans academically outperform Whites? – The cultural explanation revisited

We advocate an interactive approach to examining the role of culture and SES in explaining Asian Americans' achievement. We use Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) 2002 baseline data to test our proposition that the cultural orientation of Asian American families is different from that of white American families in ways that mediate the effects of family SES on children's academic achievement. The results support our hypothesis, indicating that: (1) SES's positive effects on achievement are stronger among white students than among Asian-Americans; (2) the association between a family's SES and behaviors and attitudes is weaker among Asian-Americans than among Whites; (3) a fraction of the Asian-White achievement gap can be accounted for by ethnic differences in behaviors and attitudes, particularly ethnic differences in family SES's effects on behaviors and attitudes. We find that Asian Americans’ behaviors and attitudes are less influenced by family SES than those of Whites are and that this difference helps generate Asians’ premium in achievement. This is especially evident at lower levels of family SES.     

Neighborhoods, employment, and welfare use: Assessing the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic composition

We draw upon data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to examine the effect of neighborhood socioeconomic composition on two key economic outcomes, and in doing so to test the validity of the index of concentration at the extremes (ICE) as a measure of neighborhood circumstances. Methodologically, we find that the index succinctly captures economic variation within neighborhoods in a way that avoids problems of colinearity that have characterized prior studies. Neighborhoods can be characterized as falling on a continuum ranging from concentrated disadvantage to concentrated advantage; the ICE measure does a good job capturing this variation and differentiating the neighborhood circumstances experienced by different groups. Substantively, we show that neighborhood economic circumstances are related to new mothers’ welfare use and employment, above and beyond their individual socioeconomic characteristics.     

大学生集群行为的心理分析、控制与引导

集群行为是一种在激烈的互动中自发产生的、无指导、无明确目的、不受正常社会规范制约的众多人的狂热行为。为及时预防、控制大学生集群行为的不良发展,在大学生集群行为的心理机制分析研究的基础上,探讨对大学生集群行为的控制与引导,具有十分重要的理论意义和现实意义。     

Intimate partner violence in neighborhood context: The roles of structural disadvantage,subjective disorder,and emotional distress

Most theoretical treatments of intimate partner violence (IPV) focus on individual-level processes. Some researchers have attempted to situate IPV within the larger neighborhood context, but few studies have sought to link structural- and individual-level factors. The current analyses fill a research gap by examining the role of anger and depression in the association between neighborhood disadvantage and IPV. Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) and the 2000 Census, this study focuses on structural indicators of disadvantage as well as subjective disorder, and highlights the complex associations between neighborhood conditions, emotional distress, and IPV. Findings indicate that anger and depressive symptoms partially explain the association between neighborhood disadvantage and IPV. Additionally, the associations between disadvantage, disorder, and IPV depend on respondent’s level of anger. Results underscore the need to further consider the role of neighborhood factors (both objective and subjective) in relation to IPV, and also suggest the utility of introducing individual-level emotional measures to assess the circumstances under which neighborhoods matter most.