cjrc-sponsored research

  • Project:
  • Who You Are and Where You Live: Status Context, and Adolescent Problem Behavior

  • Investigator:
  • Lori A. Burrington (Sociology)

  • Abstract:
  • This research moves beyond traditional microlevel, macrolevel, and multilevel analyses of problem behavior to examine the extent to which neighborhood contexts are differentially relevant in their effects on adolescent problem behavior depending upon the adolescent’s race/ethnicity, sex, and cultural/financial capital. In particular, the work considers how the demographic and social characteristics of a neighborhood interact with an adolescent’s own “status,” as: poor, middle class, or affluent; culturally deprived or enriched; Latino, African American, or White; and male or female. Neighborhood social processes such as collective efficacy serve to limit problem behavior through mechanisms of direct control (e.g., supervision) but also indirect control (i.e., creating in an individual or family a concern about “what the neighbors will think”). This assumes, however, that the neighborhood is a “reference group” that takes on the same meaning for all individuals in the neighborhood. Yet, individual “status” may make the neighborhood reference group’s projected judgment more or less salient for decisions and outcomes, and whether one chooses to distinguish oneself from, or conform to, those who share the same physical residential environment. Prior research on neighborhood social structure, stratification, and the historical experiences of identifiable groups yield hypotheses about how status group membership may interact with neighborhood characteristics in the prevention of adolescent delinquency and problem behavior. These hypotheses are examined through multilevel analyses, using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey.