Jeremy Freese Robert Vargas Northwestern University
How does neighborhood violence impact the educational outcomes of youth? This dissertation will examine how victimization and exposure to neighborhood violence is associated with the GPA (grade point average) attendance record, social network composition, participation in community organizations, and attitudes toward schooling among high school students in a pre-dominantly Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. Building upon two years of ethnographic research with community organizations, youth, and the two major gangs in the neighborhood, the co-PI will conduct a household survey of neighborhood youth. In total, a random sample of a total of 540 households within 60 blocks in the neighborhood will be surveyed: 40 blocks within the two gang territories (20 in each), and 20 blocks nearest to the street that divides the two gang territories. While previous research has documented how violence can explain variation in adolescent outcomes between neighborhoods, it is widely acknowledged that most variation in adolescent outcomes lies within neighborhoods. This mixed method neighborhood case study will contribute to our understanding of violence as a mechanism of neighborhood effects, as well as sociological theories on the connection between micro and macro processes.
Policies aimed at curbing neighborhood violence typically involve increased surveillance and security, as well as interventions at school through various forms of programming. By studying how neighborhood violence is associated with the educational outcomes of youth, this study might encourage education policymakers to focus on neighborhood violence prevention as an element of school reform. This research may also bring attention to the impact of neighborhood violence and policing in immigrant communities with large undocumented populations. While, generally, immigrant communities have been shown to have low levels of violence and crime, these numbers may be underestimated for communities with undocumented populations. This dissertation may shed light on how violence has a unique consequence for undocumented adolescents or adolescents with undocumented family members.
With funding from NSF, the PI hired and trained six research assistants in collecting 355 surveys from a random sample of households in a poor neighborhood with high rates of violent crime. This unique dataset has been used to draft a journal article (under review) on the "code of silence" in poor neighborhood (e.g. the expectation that residents are to refrain from sharing information with police). This article is the first of its kind to collect survey data on the code of silence, and found that nearly a third of residents reported an unwillingness to identify suspects to police. The PI, with help from research assistants, was also able to construct a unique time series dataset on the number of daily violent crimes in the neighborhood, as well as where they took place. These data are currently being used to draft manuscripts assessing the effects of violence prevention program budget cuts and FBI raids of gang leadership on short-term spikes in neighborhood violent crime. This project fulfills NSF's intellectual merit criteria because it has resulted in the creation of two very unique datasets that have, thus far, revealed hidden factors behind the reproduction of neighborhood violence in poor communities. Even further, this research provides a template for future studies to use administrative records data for assessing fluctuations in violent crime over time. Finally, this project has achieved NSF's broader impacts criteria through the training of three undergraduate students from underrepresented groups who have enrolled in graduate school after their training and participation in this project.
