Neighborhood Conditions - Collateral Follow-up
This measure appears in the following time-points: Collat12, Collat24, Collat36.
Related Construct
Description of Measure
The Neighborhood Conditions Measure was adapted for this study to assess the environment surrounding the adolescent's home (Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999). These items are asked of the collateral because at follow-ups the collateral is sometimes a parent and it is therefore assumed that he/she lives in the same neighborhood as the subject. However, if the collateral does not live in the same neighborhood as the subject, the section is skipped. Items from the measure tap physical disorder of the neighborhood (e.g., "cigarettes on the street or in the gutters," "graffiti or tags"), as well as social disorder (e.g., "adults fighting or arguing loudly," "people using needles or syringes to take drugs"). The scale contains 21 items to which the collateral responds on a 4- point Likert scale ranging from "Never" to "Often," with higher scores indicating a greater degree of disorder within the community. An additional item is included to determine the amount of time the collateral reporter spent in the subject's neighborhood over the past year, where responses range from "None of my time" to "All of my time."
If the youth is in a locked facility at the time of the interview, the neighborhood of focus for this interview is the address at which the youth lived prior to going into the facility.
We have computed three scales from the neighborhood conditions items:
- total score [c#hood];the mean of all 21 items in the scale. Data must be contained in 16 of the 21 items in order to receive a computed mean.
- physical disorder [c#neiphy]; the mean of the 12 physical disorder questions. Data is required in 9 of the 12 items.
- social disorder [c#neisoc]; the mean of the 9 social disorder questions. Data is required in 6 of the 9 items.
The following item is also available for this measure:
- How much of your time have you spent in the subject's neighborhood over the past year [C#Neitim]
Data Issues
- This measure is skipped if the collateral reporter does not live in the same neighborhood as the subject, or if they have not spent any time at all in that neighborhood during the past year.
- Eight cases are missing this measure as a result of an error in the interview programming. These cases are noted with a missing value code of -700 (Data missing: Result of an error in programming).
References
- Elliott, D., Menard, S., Rankin, B., Elliott, A., Huizinga, D., and Wilson, W. (forthcoming). Beating the odds: Overcoming Disadvantage in High-Risk Neighborhoods.
- Elliott, D. S., Wilson, W. J., Huizinga, D., Sampson, R. J., Elliott, & Rankin. (1996). The effects of neighborhood disadvantage on adolescent development. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 33(4), 389-426.
- Sampson, R. & Raudenbush, S. (1999). Systematic social observation on public spaces: A new look at disorder in urban neighborhoods. American Journal of Sociology, 105(3), 603-651.
- Sampson, R. & Raudenbush, S., Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918-924.
- Sampson, R. (1997). Collective regulation of adolescent misbehavior: Validation results from eighty Chicago neighborhoods. Journal of Adolescent Research, 12(2), 227-244.