Mapping Mobility: Using Life Event Calendars to Describe Residential Mobility and Neighborhood Conditions for a Sample of Criminally Embedded Women

• In Event: Using and Analyzing Life Event Calendars in Criminological Research

Abstract

Criminologists increasingly use life event calendars (LEC) to collect longitudinal, retrospective data on the timing and sequencing of individuals’ life experiences such as their offending, employment, and residential mobility (including data on the types of neighborhoods individuals’ move into and out of over time). While this methodology avoids some of the drawbacks associated with other data sources, LECs present a unique set of challenges. Drawing on our experiences with the Women’s Experiences with Violence (WEV) project—a multi-site study that used a LEC to elicit three years of retrospective data from a sample of incarcerated women—we discuss the advantages and limitations of using this methodology to collect data on residential mobility and living location. In addition, we describe the lessons we learned and provide suggestions for how to better collect these types of data moving forward. Finally, building on work by Simpson and Kruttschnitt (2014), we link the LEC data to U.S. Census and official crime data to describe the neighborhoods in which our sample of female offenders reported living and the extent to which these neighborhood characteristics changed as the women moved from one neighborhood to another.

Authors

• Lee Ann Slocum, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Sally S. Simpson, University of Maryland

• Candace Kruttschnitt, University of Toronto

• Mariel Alper, University of Minnesota