Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods: Community Survey, 1994 - 1995

The purpose of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods was to understand how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development. This included an extensive undertaking on understanding the causes and the pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence. The Project had a focus on studying problematic behavior as well as an interest in social competence. The long-term objectives were to create knowledge that would inform violence prevention strategies and help develop better approaches to the promotion of social competence in children from infancy to young adulthood. The Project combined two studies into one comprehensive design. The first study was an intensive study of Chicago's neighborhoods including their social, economic, organizational, political, and cultural structures, and the changes that take place within these structures. This was achieved through data collection efforts at the community level, including a community survey of Chicago residents, interviews with neighborhood experts, systematic social observations involving block by block videotaping, and analyses of school, police, court and other agency records. The second study was a longitudinal cohort study involving seven randomly selected cohorts of children, adolescents, and young adults, looking at the changing circumstances of their lives and the personal characteristics that may lead them towards or away from a variety of antisocial behaviors. PHDCN is comprised of five components: I-a longitudinal Study with an embedded intensive study of infants; II-a Community Survey; III-an Observational Study of Neighborhoods; IV-a Neighborhood Expert Survey; and V-Administrative data. Neighborhoods were operationally defined as 343 clusters of city blocks from Chicago's 847 populated census tracts. The Community Survey is a multidimensional assessment by Chicago residents of their neighborhoods. The Survey evaluated the structural conditions and organization of neighborhoods in Chicago with respect to such critical dimensions as dynamic structure of the local community; the neighborhood organizational/political structure; cultural values; informal social control; formal social control; and social cohesion. The Survey consisted of household interviews with 8,782 Chicago residents aged 18 and older from all 343 neighborhood clusters. The NCs were constructed to be internally homogenous with respect to socioeconomic and ethnic mix, housing density, and family. Variables assessed included "Social, Economic, and Demographic Structure";"Organizational/Political Structure";"Informal Social Control";"Social Cohesion";"Social Disorder"; and "Cultural Structure".