Suchergebnisse

Objectives. The study of neighborhood effects on health and well‐being has regained prominence in recent years. Most authors have relied on Census data and other administrative data sources to assess neighborhood characteristics. Less commonly employed, but gaining in popularity, are measures from surveys that ask neighborhood residents about various aspects of their neighborhood environment. Such surveys are a potentially attractive alternative or augmentation to administrative data sources.Methods. Using data from a study of neighborhood effects on pregnancy outcomes among low‐income, inner‐city women in Philadelphia, PA (N=3,988), we examined psychometric and ecometric properties of scales used to assess perceptions of crime and safety, physical disorder and social disorder, and estimated effects of individual‐ and neighborhood‐level predictors on perceptions.Results. The three perceived neighborhood disorder scales had high internal consistency and good neighborhood‐level reliability. Several individual attributes of the women predicted perceptions of neighborhood disorder, controlling for neighborhood‐level characteristics (within Census tract, fixed‐effect estimates). In addition, our objective indicators of neighborhood crime and physical and social disorder were highly significant predictors of women's perceptions, explaining over 70 percent of the between‐neighborhood variation in perceptions.Conclusions. When data on objective neighborhood characteristics are unavailable, the inclusion of questions about residents' perceptions of neighborhood conditions in surveys of inner‐city residents provides a useful alternative to characterize neighborhood conditions.

Ataque de nervios is a Latina/o idiom of distress that may occur as a culturally sanctioned response to acute stressful experiences, particularly relating to grief, threat, family conflict, and a breakdown in social networks. The contextual factors associated with ataque de nervios have received little attention in research. This study examined the association between neighborhood factors and the experience of ataque de nervios among a sample of Latinas/os participating in the Latino Health and Well-Being Project in the northeastern United States. We examined the association between neighborhood cohesion, safety, trust, and violence and ataque de nervios. In multivariate logistic regression models, neighborhood violence was associated with ataque de nervios ( p = .02), with each unit increase in the neighborhood violence scale being associated with 1.36 times greater odds of experiencing ataque de nervios. None of the other neighborhood variables were significantly associated with ataque de nervios. The positive association between neighborhood violence and the experience of ataque de nervios makes a further case for policy efforts and other investments to reduce neighborhood violence.

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined the relationship between changes in neighborhood characteristics during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood and depression among sexual minority young adults. Previous research has found that neighborhood characteristics influence sexual minority mental health and that sexual minorities are more likely to move to more urban and politically liberal locations. No study to date, however, has examined the impact of changes in neighborhood characteristics on sexual minority depression. The results from this study show that decreases in the percent urban was associated with increased risk of depression and decreases in the percent Republican voters in sexual minority's neighborhood was associated with decreases in risk of depression. The results suggest that clinicians may want to screen sexual minority youth for recent changes in their neighborhoods to assess if these changes may be related to the onset or exacerbation of depressive episodes.

The growing tension between conservative attitudes and liberal policies on gender issues in Chile is reflected by the high rates of domestic violence juxtaposed by a strong governmental policy aimed at preventing this social problem. Attempts to understand factors associated with domestic violence in Chile, and in other countries as well, have not paid much attention to neighborhood-level factors. This manuscript examined the extent to which selected neighborhood characteristics were associated with domestic violence against women. Relying on theories of social disorganization and social stress, this study conceptualized residence in a disadvantaged neighborhood as a source of stress and examined the relationship between detrimental physical and social characteristics of neighborhoods and the chance of women experiencing domestic violence. Results revealed that a higher level of trash in neighborhoods was associated with increased rates of domestic violence above and beyond individual characteristics. Findings also suggested that the relationship between high levels of trash in neighborhoods and domestic violence was greater for women with higher levels of financial stress. Given the potential role of neighborhood environments in reducing domestic violence, a comprehensive approach incorporating both neighborhood- and individual-level factors may be critical in designing effective preventive interventions for domestic violence.