Progress 10/01/03 to 09/30/07
Outputs
A number of research projects were completed in the past year. As a follow-up to our earlier reserach examining the interaction between an adolescent's own violence and exposure to violence in the community, my colleague Rob Latzman and I were chosed as Special Editors for an issue of the Journal of Community Psychology on the topic of "Youth Violence as Adaptation?."
Impacts
Two studies examined the role of school and neighborhood social contexts on adolescent violence. In the first, my colleagues and I found that measures of school social climate, including teacher perceptions of disciplinary problems, were associated with adolescent antisocial behavior, controlling for a wide range of family characteristics. In a second study, we found that schools that are forced to accept a larger proportion of students with a developmental history of violence have more disciplinary problems during the school year.
Publications
- Leblanc, Line, Swisher, R., Tremblay, R. and Vitaro, F. 2007. Antisocial behavior and high school social climate: A 10 year longitudinal and multilevel study. Journal of Research on Adolescence. Forthcoming.
- Swisher, R. and Latzman, R. 2007. Youth Violence as Adaptation?, Journal of Community Psychology. Forthcoming.
- LeBlanc, Line, Swisher, R., Broidy, L., Nagin, D., Vitaro, F. and Tremblay, R. 2007. Predicting high school teacher's perceptions of discipline problems: A longitudinal and multilevel study. Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal. Forthcoming.
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Progress 01/01/06 to 12/31/06
Outputs
The past year has involved continued research in the area of youth violence in community context, as well as expansion into the related risk factor of incarceration in the lives of disadvantaged families. As a result of the favorable reception of our article in the Journal of Community Psychology, we were asked to serve as Guest Editors of a special issue of the Journal of Community Psychology on the topic of Youth Violence as Adaptation? Often accompanying violence in poor neighborhoods are problems of domestic violence, incarceration, and substance abuse. I have recently begun to examine how these interrelated risk-factors are associated with fathering outcomes among new unmarried parents in the Fragile Families study. In a recently published paper with Maureen Waller in Social Problems, we hypothesize and find that fathers exhibiting each type of risk factor (i.e., physical abuse of mothers, recent and past incarceration, and problematic substance use) are less
likely to transition to marriage or cohabitation with mothers, and are less likely to have contact with and engage in daily activities with children. The qualitative analysis illustrates particular strategies that mothers and fathers employ to address these risk factors, including relationship dissolution and protective gatekeeping by mothers in cases of physical abuse by fathers. Implications for current marriage promotion initiatives are discussed. We have just revised and resubmitted a follow-up analysis (Journal of Family Issues) that focuses on racial and ethnic differences in associations between incarceration and father involvement. We hypothesize and find support for the notion that incarceration is so prevalent with minority communities, which have been disproportionately affected by mass incarceration, that minority men with a history of incarceration are no less involved with their children than are other minority men. Moreover, the mothers of their children are no less
likely to trust the fathers. Among non-Latino white men, in contrast, recent and past incarceration is strongly associated with mother's distrust and lower father involvement. The R03 project titled Constructing an AddHealth Contextual Database is wrapping up. All of the data has been collected and will be transferred and merged into the full AddHealth project data files in the next month. My follow-up R01 application to NICHD, which proposed to use this newly collected data to examine the joint effects of neighborhoods and schools on adolescent educational outcomes was unfortunately not funded. I am engaged in supplementary descriptive analyses to better demonstrate the projects feasibility, and am revising the grant proposal for resubmission.
Impacts
It is hoped that this project will contribute to greater knowledge of the ways that neighborhood contexts shape individual life chances in adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, and that this information will assist policy makers and human service practitioners to develop more effective interventions.
Publications
- Swisher, R.R. 2007. Life Course Transitions. In Leong, F. T. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Waller, M. and Swisher, R.R. 2006. Fathers' Risk Factors in Fragile Families: Implications for Healthy Relationships and Father Involvement. Social Problems. 53(3):392-420.
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Progress 01/01/05 to 12/31/05
Outputs
A major advance in 2005 involved expanding the focus of the neighborhood-based project to include information about the schools in which neighborhoods are embedded. This is a critical issue, as a primary ground upon which parents select the neighborhoods in which they live is the quality of local schools. This new information was applied to an existing analysis of how neighborhoods influence adolescent college expectations. A three-level hierarchical model analysis found that both neighborhood and school human capital are associated positively with adolescent college expectations, controlling for a wide range of adolescent and family characteristics. Moreover, it reveals that the educational expectations of parents within schools with high human capital seem to account for this relationship. The results of this analysis are currently being reviewed as part of a revise and resubmission to a leading educational journal. A related analysis of how middle class families
view and interact with their neighborhoods has recently yielded a publication in the Journal Family Relations. Using a life course perspective, this study analyzes the adaptive strategy of community selection utilized by middle-class dual-earner couples, as well as the perceived family friendliness of their communities. Although many common concerns exist (most paramount being safety, jobs, and housing quality), parents are more apt than nonparents to mention the importance of schools, parks, libraries, and community events. For women, safety and proximity to their spouses' jobs are stronger considerations than they are for men. Although respondents mention many similar family-friendly features, only some matter in predicting their overall positive evaluations of community family friendliness. Community is discussed as being an understudied dimension of work-family policy and research. A review of the literature on neighborhood effects and youth development has also recently been
published in the Encyclopedia of Human Development. Earlier work on the project led to the successful receipt of an R03 from NIH to construct a contextual database to accompany the third wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. This data collection effort is currently underway. As a follow-up to the R03, an R01 is currently being developed that will be submitted to the NIH in early 2006. This proposal will involve a longitudinal life course perspective on neighborhood and school effects on educational outcomes in adolescence and the transition to adulthood. This would represent an important contribution to both the school and neighborhood literatures. A second goal of the proposed project is to carefully model the selection process by which parents choose, and are sorted into, neighborhoods and schools of varying quality. This selection model, in conjunction with propensity score matching techniques, will help to assess the degree to which unobserved selection
processes may bias previous research on the influences of neighborhood and school contexts.
Impacts
It is hoped that this project will contribute to greater knowledge of the ways that neighborhood contexts shape individual life chances in adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, and that this information will assist policy makers and human service practitioners to develop more effective interventions.
Publications
- Swisher, R.R. 2005. Neighborhoods. In Salkind, Neil (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Human Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Sweet, S., Swisher, R.R. and Moen, P. 2005. Selecting and Assessing the Family-Friendly Community: Adaptive Strategies of Middle-Class Dual Earner Couples. Family Relations. 54(5):596-606.
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Progress 01/01/04 to 12/31/04
Outputs
One subcomponent of the project has examined the interactive relationships between adolescent violence, exposure to community violence, and adolescent well-being. Findings were presented at the APA Annual Meetings, and have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Community Psychology. In particular, it was found that an adolescent's own violence, in a context of high exposure to community violence, is somewhat protective of psychological well-being. One's own violence in a dangerous environment may represent an attempt to exert control over an uncertain situation, and/or alternatively an innoculation to stress over time. This moderating relationship was found to be most pronounced among older, white, male youth. Related analyses are examining the effects of exposure to community violence on adolescent survival expectations and subjective health appraisals. Youth living in poor neighborhoods, and exposed to higher amounts of community violence, are found to be
less certain about their ability to survive into adulthood, and report report poorer subjective health. These effects are robust to controls for the potential selection of youth into violent situations, as measured by parent reports of difficult temperament, and youth self-reports of violent delinquency. Results were presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meetings. Other research in preparation has examined the varying effects of community violence on psychological well-being, when measured at different levels of exposure. Aggregated neighborhood-level exposure to violence, direct victimization, witnessing of violence, and youth's own invovlement in violence are considered. Results indicate that psychological well-being is most strongly associated with direct victimization and witnessing of violence. Research supported by this grant has led to the development of a recently funded NICHD R03. As part of this project, contextual data describing the neighborhood, labor
market, and state social policy conditions of respondents to wave three of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health will be collected and compiled into a database. It will be made available through the AddHealth project to researchers around the country. A larger grant proposal is currently under development which will support analysis of this data from a life course and policy perspective.
Impacts
It is hoped that this project will contribute to greater knowledge of the ways that neighborhood contexts shape individual life chances in adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, and that this information will assist policy makers and human service practitioners to develop more effective interventions. Findings from this research were presented to New York State extension associates through a Faculty Conversation distance learning format.
Publications
- Latzman, R. and R. Swisher. 2005. The Interactive Relationship Between Adolescent Violence, Street Violence, and Depression. Journal of Community Psychology. 33(3):355-71.
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Progress 10/01/03 to 12/31/03
Outputs
Data from the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health has been secured. Preliminary cleaning of the new wave of data is underway. Several pieces of information not yet available are the characteristics of the neighborhoods in which respondents were living at wave three. Research into appropriate sources of census and other data at the census tract, county, and state levels has been conducted. A grant proposal to collect this data, and merge it with existing Add Health files, has been developed. It will be submitted as an R03 to the NICHD.
Impacts
It is hoped that this project will contribute to greater knowledge of the ways that neighborhood contexts shape individual life chances in adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, and that this information will assist policy makers and human service practitioners to develop more effective interventions.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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