An Alternative to Residential Neighborhoods: An Exploratory Study of how Activity Spaces and Perception of Neighborhood Social Processes relate to Maladaptive Parenting

The Spatial Scale and Spread of Child Victimization

Previous research shows that large, densely populated urban areas have higher rates of child victimization that have persisted over time. However, few investigations have inquired about the processes that produce and sustain hot and cold spots of child victimization. As a result, the mechanisms that produce the observed spatial clustering of child victimization, and hence "why" harms against children tend to cluster in space, remains unknown. Does the likelihood of being a victim of violence in one location depend on a similar event happening in a nearby location within a specified timeframe? Rather, are child victims of violence more likely to reside in suboptimal neighborhood conditions? This paper aims to present an analytical and theoretical framework for distinguishing between these locational (point) processes to determine whether the empirical spatial patterns undergirding child victimization are more reflective of the "spread" via contagion (i.e., dependency) or whether they are produced by neighborhood structural inequality resulting from spatial heterogeneity. To detect spatial dependence, we applied the inhomogeneous K-function to Los Angeles Medical Examiner data on child homicide victim locations while controlling for regional differences in victimization events (i.e., heterogeneity). Our analysis found strong evidence of spatial clustering in child victimization at small spatial scales but inhibition at larger scales. We further found limited support for the spatiotemporal clustering of child victimization indicative of a contagion effect. Overall, our results support the role of neighborhood structural vulnerability in the underlying mechanisms producing patterns of child victimization across Los Angeles County. We conclude by discussing the policy implications for understanding this spatial patterning in geographical context and for developing effective and targeted preventive interventions.

Place-Based Developmental Research: Conceptual and Methodological Advances in Studying Youth Development in Context

Scientists have, for some time, recognized that development unfolds in numerous settings, including families, schools, neighborhoods, and organized and unorganized activity settings. Since the turn of the 20th century, the body of mainstream neighborhood effects scholarship draws heavily from the early 20th century Chicago School of Sociology frameworks and have been situating development in neighborhood contexts and working to identify the structures and processes via which neighborhoods matter for a range of developmental outcomes, especially achievement, behavioral and emotional problems, and sexual activity. From this body of work, two new areas of developmental scholarship are emerging. Both areas are promising for advancing an understanding of child development in context. First, cultural-developmental neighborhood researchers are advancing neighborhood effects research that explicitly recognizes the ways that racial, ethnic, cultural, and immigrant social positions matter for neighborhood environments and for youths' developmental demands, affordances, experiences, and competencies. This body of work substantially expands the range of developmental outcomes examined in neighborhood effects scholarship to recognize normative physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, social, and cultural competencies that have largely been overlooked in neighborhood effects scholarship that espoused a more color-blind developmental approach. Second, activity space neighborhood researchers are recognizing that residential neighborhoods have important implications for broader activity spaces-or the set of locations and settings to which youth are regularly exposed, including, for example, schools, work, organized activities, and hang-outs. They are using newer technologies and geographic frameworks to assess exposure to residential neighborhood and extra-neighborhood environments. These perspectives recognize that time (i.e., from microtime to mesotime) and place are critically bound and that exposures can be operationalized at numerous levels of the ecological system (i.e., from microsystems to macrosystems). These frameworks address important limitations of prior development in context scholarship by addressing selection and exposure. Addressing selection involves recognizing that families have some degree of choice when selecting into settings and variables that predict families' choices (e.g., income) also predict development. Considering exposure involves recognizing that different participants or residents experience different amounts of shared and nonshared exposures, resulting in both under-and over-estimation of contextual effects. Activity space scholars incorporate exposure to the residential neighborhood environments, but also to other locations and settings to which youth are regularly exposed, like schools, after-school settings, work, and hang-outs. Unfortunately, the cultural-development and activity space streams, which have both emerged from early 20th century work on neighborhood effects on development, have been advancing largely independently. Thus, the overarching aim of this monograph is to integrate scholarship on residential neighborhoods, cultural development, and activity spaces to advance a framework that can support a better understanding of development in context for diverse groups. In Chapters I and II we present the historical context of the three streams of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological research. We also advance a comprehensive cultural-developmental activity space framework for studying development in context among children, youth, and families that are ethnically, racially, and culturally heterogeneous. This framework actively recognized diversity in ethnic, racial, immigrant, and socioeconomic social positions. In Chapters III-V we advance specific features of the framework, focusing on: (1) the different levels of nested and nonnested ecological systems that can be captured and operationalized with activity space methods, (2) the different dimensions of time and exposures or experiences that can be captured and operationalized by activity space methods, and (3) the importance of settings structures and social processes for identifying underlying mechanisms of contextual effects on development. Structures are setting features related to the composition and spatial arrangement of people and institutions (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage, ethnic/racial compositions). Social processes represent the collective social dynamics that take place in settings, like social interactions, group activities, experiences with local institutions, mechanisms of social control, or shared beliefs. In Chapter VI, we highlight a range of methodological and empirical exemplars from the United States that are informed by our comprehensive cultural-developmental activity space framework. These exemplars feature both quantitative and qualitative methods, including method mixing. These exemplars feature both quantitative and qualitative methods, including method mixing. The exemplars also highlight the application of the framework across four different samples from populations that vary in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), geographic region, and urbanicity. They capture activity space characteristics and features in a variety of ways, in addition to incorporating family shared and nonshared activity space exposures. Finally, in Chapter VII we summarize the contributions of the framework for advancing a more comprehensive science of development in context, one that better realizes major developmental theories emphasizing persons, processes, contexts, and time. Additionally, we offer a place-based, culturally informed developmental research agenda to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population.

Space and Place in Alcohol Research

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

To summarize the recent literature on social and physical environments and their links to alcohol use and identify empirical research strategies that will lead to a better understanding of alcohol use in contexts.

RECENT FINDINGS

Recent research has continued to describe the importance of neighborhood and regional contexts on alcohol use, while a smaller emerging scientific literature assesses the impacts of contexts on drinking.

SUMMARY

The dynamic, longitudinal, and multiscale processes by which social and physical structures affect social interactions and substance use have not yet been uncovered or quantified. In order to understand and quantify these processes, assessments of exposures (e.g., how individuals use space) and risks within specific locations are essential. Methods to better assess these exposures and risks include model-based survey approaches, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and other forms of ecologically- and temporally-specific analyses, affiliation network analyses, simulation models, and qualitative/multi-methods studies.

Activity Spaces: Assessing Differences in Alcohol Exposures and Alcohol Use for Parents

Parental alcohol use and alcohol outlet densities in residential areas are related to risk for child maltreatment. However, some parents spend significant time outside of their residential neighborhood. Thus, we may not be accurately assessing how alcohol environments are related to risks for problematic parenting. Here, we examine how residential environments and activity spaces are related to outlet density and whether drinking events in our sample of parents differ by location (e.g., routine vs. rare locations) and whether their children are present. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 60 parents living in four cities in the San Francisco Bay area who provided information on where they spent time, where they drank, and whether children were present. We constructed measures of activity spaces (e.g., convex hull polygons) and activity patterns (e.g., shortest network distance) and calculated outlet density in each. Density of alcohol outlets for residential Census tract was not related to density of the activity space and activity pattern measures. Alcohol use occurred more frequently (regardless of whether their children were present) inside activity spaces operationalized as convex hull polygons or two standard deviational ellipses. Measures that capture larger activity space areas (e.g., convex hull polygons, two standard deviational ellipses) may better model where people spend time, regardless of whether the location is routine or rare. By continuing to use activity spaces to explore relationships between outlet densities, drinking behaviors, and problems, we can start to ascertain those mechanisms by which outlets may affect local problems.

From the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road: Automated redistricting of areas using physical barriers as dividers of social space

This study examines the properties of administrative areas compared to a new method of automated redistricting when measuring social differentiation and segregation. Using physical barriers, such as roads, railways, streams, areas of uninhabited nature, and the like as dividers of social space, this study explores alternative ways of thinking social belonging and social cohesion that are beyond standard measures of geography and utilize areas of smaller size and population count. The geographical data are linked to Danish register data of the total Danish population in 2015, N = 4,986,125 on key variables of income, months of completed education, and ethnicity. The overall findings in this study suggest that rethinking geography when localizing social enclaves and segregated communities yields better results than using the more illogical administrative areas. The visual inspection, entropy levels of homogeneity, and intraclass correlation suggest that smaller areas that are divided by physical objects serve as a better reservoir of social cohesion and therefore better measurement of social inequality.

The places parents go: understanding the breadth, scope, and experiences of activity spaces for parents

Neighborhood environments are related to parenting behaviors, which in turn have a life-long effect on children's health and well-being. Activity spaces, which measure individual routine patterns of movement, may be helpful in assessing how physical and social environments shape parenting. In this study we use qualitative data and GIS mapping from 4 California cities to examine parental activity spaces. Parents described a number of factors that shape their activity spaces including caregiving status, the age of their children, and income. Parental activity spaces also varied between times (weekends vs. weekdays) and places (adult-only vs. child-specific places). Knowing how to best capture and study parental activity spaces could identify mechanisms by which environmental factors influence parenting behaviors and child health.

A momentary exposures analysis of proximity to alcohol outlets and risk for assault

AIMS

This study estimated, with high spatial and temporal specificity, individuals' risk of being assaulted relative to their momentary proximity to alcohol outlets during daily activities.

DESIGN

Case-control study.

SETTING

Philadelphia, PA, USA.

PARTICIPANTS

Cases were 194 non-gun assault victims and 135 gun assault victims aged between 10 and 24 years. Age-matched controls (n = 274) were selected using random-digit dialing.

MEASUREMENTS

Participants described minute-by-minute movements (i.e. activity paths) during the course of the day of the assault (cases) or a recent randomly selected day within 3 days of interview (controls). The dependent measure was being an assault case compared with a non-assault control. The main independent measures were participants' momentary proximity to alcohol outlets. The units of analysis were 10-minute segments beginning at 4:00 a.m.

FINDINGS

Proximity to bars and restaurants was associated with decreased odds of non-gun assault before 1 p.m. [e.g. 7 a.m. to 9:59 a.m.: odds ratio (OR) = 0.78; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.64, 0.94; P = 0.008], and increased odds after 7 p.m. (e.g. 1 a.m. to 3:59 a.m.: OR = 1.96; 95% CI = 1.24, 3.09; P = 0.004). Proximity to beer stores was associated with increased odds before 1 p.m. (e.g. 7 a.m. to 9:59 a.m.: OR = 2.34; 95% CI = 1.58, 3.46; P < 0.001) and from 4 p.m. to 6:59 p.m. (OR = 1.50; 95% CI = 1.14, 1.96; P = 0.004), but decreased odds after 7 p.m. (e.g. 1 a.m. to 3:59 a.m.: OR = 0.28; 95% CI = 0.12, 0.63; P = 0.002). Proximity to alcohol outlets was mostly unrelated to risks for gun assault.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals in areas with greater densities of bars and restaurants and beer stores appear to be at increased risk for non-gun assault at times when these outlets are likely to be patronized most heavily.