Neighborhood Conditions - Subject Follow-up
This measure appears in the following time-points: Follow06, Follow12, Follow18, Follow24, Follow30, Follow36, Follow48, Follow60, Follow72, Follow84.
Click the icon to view the questions asked for this measure.
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). Items from the self-report 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 participants respond 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 participant spends within his/her neighborhood where responses range from "None of my time" to "All of my time."
The neighborhood of focus for this measure is the neighborhood in which the youth spent the most time in the recall period. It is not necessarily the neighborhood that is most recent to the interview date. Please refer to the data issues section of the codebook for a summary of the rules governing this section.
The scales were found to have excellent internal consistency at baseline (total score alpha = .94; physical disorder alpha = .91; social disorder alpha = .87). The physical disorder and social disorder scales correlate at .83. However, CFA of the 2-factor solution is not impressive (GFI: .84; RMR: .06). As a result, we recommend use of the total score only.
The three scales were also found to have excellent internal consistency at the follow-up time-points. The alphas for each scale for 6 through 24 months are as follows:
- total score: 6 month - .96; 12 month - .96; 18 month - .96; 24 month - .96
- physical disorder: 6 month - .94; 12 month - .94; 18 month - .93; 24 month - .94
- social disorder: 6 month - .92; 12 month - .92; 18 month - .92; 24 month - .92
We have computed four scales from the neighborhood conditions items:
- total score [S#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 [S#NEIPHY]; the mean of the 12 physical disorder questions. Data must be contained in nine of the 12 items in order to receive a computed mean.
- social disorder [S#NEISOC]; the mean of the 9 social disorder questions. Data must be contained in six of the nine items in order to receive a computed mean.
- neighborhood safety [s#nsafe]; the mean of seven items, two of which are reverse coded. Data must be contained in all seven items in order to receive a computed mean.
There are additional questions asked about perceived safety in the neighborhood. These questions mirror those asked of adolescents when they are assessing the types of institutional environments that they have experienced during the recall period. There have been no psychometric analyses done on these items.
Data Issues
- The neighborhood of focus for this measure is determined by the living calendar. An address and "type" code are entered for the location at which the participant lived the longest during each month of the recall period. The neighborhood conditions questions will focus on the place that is NOT an institution (from location type, 6=secure facility, 8=RTC, 9=medical hospital or 10=psychiatric hospital). Ties go to the most recent location. If a subject was locked up for the entire recall period (e.g., they have only lived in places of type 6, 8, 9 or 10), this measure is skipped.
- For 86 cases across all follow-up time-points, the subject spent the entire recall period in an institution, but a programming bug caused the subject to receive the neighborhood questions. For these cases, we have removed all data from this measure and inserted a missing value code indicating the subject did not skip into the measure.
- All Neighborhood Safety items were added to the interview in version 01.09. Data for this measure is available in all timepoints.
- Some cases are missing data for this measure as a result of a bug in the programming code. Cases with this issue are noted with a missing value code of -700.
- Some cases are missing data for this measure as a result of data cleaning changes done in order to correct an interviewer mistake. Cases with this issue are noted with a missing value code of -800.
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.