Collective Efficacy, Disorder, and Real-Time Perceptions of Informal Social Control Among Youth

• In Event: Communities and Place: Activity Space Exposures, Community Perceptions, and Crime

Abstract

Collective efficacy and disorder theory share the assumption that youth perceptions of informal social control in situ may be a pathway through which each social process affects the likelihood of offending. To date, no study has examined the association between variation in exposure to neighborhood level collective efficacy and disorder in the moment and youth perceptions of the environment as characterized by high or low levels of informal social control. We draw on unique data from the 2014-16 Adolescent Health and Development in Context study combining area-level estimates of collective efficacy and disorder with variation in youths’ (ages 11-17) ecological momentary assessment-based perceptions of the immediate context as behaviorally regulated. Neighborhood collective efficacy and disorder measures are spatially smoothed estimates based on Bayesian land use filtering models of N=1369 caregiver reports on the social characteristics of N=4526 locations. Fixed effects analyses of non-home EMA (N=4725) responses regarding informal social control perceptions nested within youth (N=1126) offer evidence that higher levels of collective efficacy in the surrounding neighborhood environment are positively associated with youth real-time perceptions of the immediate context as behaviorally controlled. In contrast, we find no evidence of an association between disorder and youth informal social control perceptions.

Authors

• Christopher R. Browning, Ohio State University

• Catherine A. Calder, The University of Texas at Austin

• Bethany Boettner, Ohio State University

• Nicolo Pinchak, University of Chicago