Why Small Is Better: Advancing the Study of the Role of Behavioral Contexts in Crime Causation

Collective Efficacy, Neighborhood and Geographical Units of Analysis: Findings from a Case Study of Swedish Residential Neighborhoods

“…Neighborhoods as units of analysis remain important, but recently the importance of the size of geographical units of analysis have been brought to the forefront of the agenda in geographical criminology (Weisburd et al 2009a;Andresen & Malleson 2011;Kennedy et al 2012) and it has been argued that smaller is better (Oberwittler & Wikström 2009;Sutherland et al 2013). Even more recent is the notion of Egohoods, overlapping neighborhoods based on spatial proximity, that have been argued to better represent social reality (Hipp & Boessen 2013: 4 Defining boundaries and size of the geographical units of analysis is a difficult problem related to the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) (Openshaw 1996;Tita & Radil 2010;Oberwittler & Wikström 2009;Lupton 2003;Hipp & Boessen 2013).…”

“…Even more recent is the notion of Egohoods, overlapping neighborhoods based on spatial proximity, that have been argued to better represent social reality (Hipp & Boessen 2013: 4 Defining boundaries and size of the geographical units of analysis is a difficult problem related to the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) (Openshaw 1996;Tita & Radil 2010;Oberwittler & Wikström 2009;Lupton 2003;Hipp & Boessen 2013). MAUP consist of problems related to zonation, the placement of boundaries between units, and to scale, the size of units (Green & Flowerdew 1996;Oberwittler & Wikström 2009). In this paper the problem of scale is in focus as related to the spatial dimension of collective efficacy.…”

Outbound offending: The journey to crime and crime sprees

“…Crime location characteristics are measured at municipality level. Although this can be criticised for not being a small unit of analysis (Oberwittler & Wikström, 2009), one should realise that crimes in the whole region of Belgium are considered, and thus, our area of research is still divided in 589 units. Moreover, for mobile offending, decisions may be based on general perceptions about target areas, as it is less likely that offenders know the area in detail beforehand.…”

Measuring Disorder: Observer Bias in Systematic Social Observations at Streets and Neighborhoods

“…57), and those environments are generally smaller than the neighborhood or city where people reside. Measurement of phenomena at smaller units also enables the aggregation to a wider variety of higher units (Brantingham et al 2009;Oberwittler and Wikström 2009), which is necessary to truly grasp the crimedisorder relationship (Hipp 2007). Further research is necessary to determine the minimal amount of Systematic Social Observations, key informant interviews, and resident surveys needed to construct reliable measures at these smaller units.…”