NCJ Number
219641
Journal
Journal of Adolescent Research Volume: 22 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2007 Pages: 413-436
Date Published
July 2007
Length
24 pages
Annotation
To investigate neighborhood effects on young people, this study describes early adolescents’ in New York’s perceptions of their neighborhoods.
Abstract
Study findings support the fact that adolescents are perceptive to a number of neighborhood conditions. For example, adolescents were perceptive to features that characterized good quality neighborhoods and also frequently discussed issues related to neighborhood safety and social disorder. In particular, they did not like it when adults and youth congregated on the streets, fought, or behaved otherwise disorderly. The findings suggest that future neighborhood research must not only focus on young people’s perceptions of their immediate neighborhoods, but it must also consider adolescents’ social environments as a whole when exploring the link to health. In the past decade, neighborhood research, the body of work examining how the built environment affects residents, has been actively pursued across the social sciences. However, little research has been conducted on young people’s perceptions of their neighborhoods. This study employed a qualitative framework for exploring early adolescents’ perceptions of their neighborhoods in order to inform and ground subsequent quantitative research investigating neighborhood effects on young people. The study focused on the qualitative component and explored early adolescents’ perceptions of their neighborhoods as places to live and the physical and social conditions most important to them. Figure, appendix, and references