Effect of Social Context on Adolescent Distress
PI: Karen Snedker
- Sponsor: National Institutes of Health
- Project Period: 12/15/2006 - 11/30/2010
- Current Faculty
- Jerald Herting - Key Personnel (4 active projects)
The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the influence of neighborhood context on emotional distress — depressed affect, anxiety, hopelessness, and suicide risk behaviors – among youth. Does social environmental context matter? Specifically, do neighborhood disadvantage and instability have a direct and/or moderating effect on emotional distress or change in emotional distress net of individual, family, and peer characteristics? Moreover, do neighborhood disadvantage and instability moderate the effects of the intervention? To address these questions multiple data sources will be linked together. The base dataset comes from the Reconnecting Youth (RY) prevention research studies, funded by NIDA, Department of Education, and CDC, provides a stratified (by high risk) random sample of high school aged youth in the Seattle metropolitan area. The secondary data comes from the United States Census (poverty, unemployment, residential stability, family structure, racial/ethnic composition) and the Seattle Police Department (crime rates).
This project will link individuals in this dataset to their census tracts and add local characteristics at the census tract-level. We will explore cross-sectional associations among neighborhood disadvantage and instability and emotional distress, longitudinal effects of change in emotional distress over a 9-month period and intervention effects at post-program and at 9 month follow-up. Multilevel techniques will be used to assess these associations and adjust for the natural clustering within neighborhoods. It is expected that adding neighborhood context will enhance our understanding of mental health patterns and change among teenagers. This project represents a preliminary exploration into the effects of neighborhood context on individual behavior. |
