Links Between the Neighborhood Recreational Context and Youths’ Use of Summertime

• In Event: Links Between Youth Contexts and Learning Opportunities: Structural Systems, Culture, and Everyday Experiences

Abstract

Neighborhoods are important contexts of development, ideally offering valuable amenities, services, and social connections to residents (Leventhal et al., 2015). However, not all neighborhoods offer these benefits. Spatial disparities in developmental opportunities and hazards are well-documented (Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2020), and a growing body of literature suggests that the neighborhood environments that children grow up in can have long-term implications for educational attainment, social mobility, and wellbeing (Chetty et al., 2016; Sharkey & Elwert, 2011). While it is clear that neighborhoods shape youth development, more work is needed to unpack these associations. In particular, there is a need for research that explores how youths’ everyday experiences vary across different neighborhood environments.

The purpose of this research was to consider how the recreational contexts in which young adolescents live are related to their use of summertime. Given evidence suggesting that neighborhood-level developmental resources are implicated in youth functioning (e.g., Coley et al., 2021), we hypothesized that youth living in neighborhoods with more recreational supports and fewer barriers to recreation would participate in organized out-of-school activities for more of the summer than others, by virtue of having more viable opportunities nearby.

Data on youth and their families were drawn from the American Camp Association National Impact Study. We used survey data from summer and fall of 2018, resulting in a sample of roughly 400 10-year-olds who were enrolled in camp that year. Parents reported on the number of weeks their child spent in specific settings over summer, as well as child and family demographics. Control variables included child gender, race/ethnicity, family income, and household composition. The sample was relatively white and affluent. Data on neighborhood resources and hazards were drawn from many administrative data sources (see Table 1) and merged with youth data through zip code identifiers. To capture the relative number of recreational supports in each zip code, resource variables were dichotomized as falling above or below the national median and then summed. The same process was undertaken for recreational hazards, resulting in two distinct neighborhood indices: supports for recreation, and barriers to recreation.

A three-step approach (Bakk & Kuha, 2020) was used to estimate associations between neighborhood features, covariates, and youths’ use of summertime. First, Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify distinct patterns in youths’ use of summertime, with a six-profile class-invariant diagonal solution offering the best conceptual and statistical fit (see Figure 1). Second, respondents were assigned to categories based on their predicted class membership. Third, multinomial logistic regression models assessed links between predictors and profiles, with “mostly home” as the base group. Preliminary findings provide support for our hypothesis. Youth with more supports and fewer barriers to recreation in their neighborhoods had higher log-odds of being in activity-dense profiles (balanced summer, day camper, specialized) versus being mostly home. These relationships persisted after accounting for family income and other covariates. Findings suggest that neighborhood opportunities and hazards independently shape youths’ summertime activity involvement, with potential implications for learning, development, and academic success.

Author

• Bryn Spielvogel, University of Utah
  Presenting Author