Use of City-Archival Data to Inform Dimensional Structure of Neighborhoods

Abstract

A growing body of research has explored the impact of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent health and well-being. Most previous research has used the US Census variables as the measures of neighborhood ecology, although informative census data are not designed to represent the sociological and structural features that characterize neighborhoods. Alternatively, this study explored the use of large-city administrative data and geographical information systems to develop more uniquely informative empirical dimensions of neighborhood context. Exploratory and confirmatory structural analyses of geographically referenced administrative data aggregated to the census-block group identified three latent dimensions: social stress, structural decline, and neighborhood crime. Resultant dimensions were compared through canonical regression to those derived from US Census data. The relative explanatory capacity of the city-archival and census dimensions was assessed through multilevel linear modeling to predict standardized reading and mathematics achievement of 31,742 fifth-and 28,922 eight-grade children. Results indicated that the cityarchival dimensions uniquely augmented predictions, and the combination of city and census dimensions explained significantly more neighborhood effects on achievement than did either source of neighborhood information independently.

Characterizing social environment's association with neurocognition using census and crime data linked to the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort

“… 2 From Gross & McDermott (2009, p. 162): ‘The census block group is the smallest geographic area (encompassing approximately 1000 individuals) for systematic reporting and, consequently, researchers frequently equate the statistical phenomena exclusive to a given block-group unit with the phenomena that essentially define a neighborhood’. …”

“…All incidents to which police respond are included, with some re-classified within 5 days pending investigation (cf. Gross & McDermott, 2009). These data are then linked to 2000 census block groups.…”

“…4 The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) provides data from their Incident Transmittal System (INCT) to the University of Pennsylvania Cartographic Modeling Lab (CML), which makes it available to researchers. All incidents to which police respond are included, with some re-classified within 5 days pending investigation (cf Gross & McDermott, 2009)…”

Administrative Data as Children’s Well-Being Indicators: The South Carolina Data Bridge Project

“…Inaccuracy of data derives mainly from the irrelevancy of some pieces of information to the agencies' functioning. These pieces are usually not thoroughly collected and their collection is not monitored (Glasson and Hussain 2008;Gross and McDermott 2008). For example, physical and mailing addresses might be used interchangeably which will make cases identification and linking processes very difficult.…”

“…This calls for collaboration between agencies, the people who created the data in particular, and researchers who wish to use the data to create the relevant documents that will describe the data and the collection process (Coulton and Korbin 2007;Goerge and Lee in press;Gross and McDermott 2008).…”