Neighborhood Influences Research Articles

Disorder, networks, and cognition: do social networks buffer the influence of neighborhood and household disorder on cognitive functioning?

Objectives To examine whether neighborhood and household disorder matter for cognitive functioning among middle-aged and older adults and whether the disorder-cognition link is moderated by social network resources. Method Data are drawn from National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) Wave 2 (N = 3198). Both neighborhood and household were considered as key residential contexts that shape one’s social life and health. Exposure to neighborhood and household disorder was measured using interviewer assessments of signs of disorder and decay, including the presence of disrepair, trash, noise, and unpleasant smells such as air pollution, in the buildings and streets in which the respondent lives. Cognitive function was measured using the survey-adapted Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-SA). Network size, network range, and frequency of interaction among network members were assessed as moderators. Results Neighborhood and household disorder were independently associated with cognitive function. However, disorder in the household appeared to have more direct associations with cognitive function than did the neighborhood when both were present. The association between household disorder and cognitive function was mitigated by network size, such that poor housing conditions were associated with lower cognitive function only for those with small social networks. Conclusion This study suggests a larger network may play a role in minimizing the negative influence of household disorder on cognitive function for middle-aged and older adults. Social policy and intervention aimed at promoting network ties may help reduce further disparities in cognitive function, especially for those vulnerable groups living in a poor-quality household.

Neighborhood Attributes and Well-Being Among Older Adults in Urban Areas: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review.

Expanding urbanization rates have engendered increasing research examining linkages between urban environments and older adults’ well-being. This mixed-methods systematic review synthesizes the evidence for the influence of urban neighborhoods’ attributes on older adults’ well-being. We searched for literature published up to December 2020 across six databases and performed quality assessment and thematic analysis. The results, based on 39 identified studies, showed that natural areas in neighborhoods and a sense of community are the attributes most often associated with positive effects on well-being. Transit-related variables, urban furniture, and access to healthcare are also positively related to well-being. Neighborhoods may promote well-being more effectively when these elements are considered. However, almost half of the studies did not include all environmental dimensions simultaneously, and self-reported instruments were largely preferred over more objective assessments of the environment. Future research should thus holistically examine physical, social, and service-related attributes to produce more robust evidence.

Neighborhood, Peer, and Parental Influences on Minor and Major Substance Use of Latino and Black Adolescents.

Self-report survey data were collected from 797 adolescents (47.2% Latino, 52.8% Black) in North Carolina. Path analyses were conducted to examine relationships between youth perceptions of maternal and paternal monitoring, neighborhood crime/drugs, friends’ delinquency, peer victimization, minor substance use, and major substance use. After establishing a good fitting model, multigroup models were conducted for Blacks vs. Latinos. The results indicated perceived maternal monitoring (and paternal monitoring for Latinos) was directly related to decreased exposure to neighborhood crime/drugs and friends’ delinquency. For Latinos and Blacks, maternal and paternal monitoring were directly related to gateway substance use, and indirectly related to major substance use through gateway substance use. Additionally, friends’ delinquency and peer victimization were directly related to gateway and major substance use for Blacks and Latinos. Thus, exposure to neighborhood crime/drugs was indirectly related to substance use through friends’ delinquency and peer victimization.

Understanding Food Security Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Thailand: A Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted worldwide food security including in Thailand. This review aims to understand people’s behaviors with regard to promoting food security during the COVID-19 pandemic by covering three main cases at a community level: the food bank, the food exchange, and the food pantry. A systematic review of news content analysis and in-depth interviews were employed for data collection. Based on integrated behavioral models of motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA), the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and value–belief–norm (VBN), key results indicated that altruistic values including beliefs in opinion leaders and the benefits from food security behaviors were influences on people’s practices. The attitude toward food as a crucial factor for living, the influence of family members and neighborhoods, and the perception of what constituted enough food led people’s behavioral intentions with regard to food security. The intrapersonal communication of opinion leaders was an important initial step linking to people’s understanding of others. The most frequent qualities of opinion leaders were: having a determination to help, thinking of the benefits of local people, and believing in community capacity. Self-reliance and procedural knowledge of how to behave were key messages, while personal media, local broadcasting towers, and social media were mainly employed to distribute these messages. Two-way and networking communication should be strengthened to promote sustainable food security during the crisis.

Social network moderators of the association between Ghanaian older adults' neighbourhood walkability and social activity.

This study examined the moderating influences of active social networks (ASN), sedentary social networks (SSN) and ASN lost on the relationship between neighbourhood walkability and social activity in community-dwelling older adults aged 60 years or more in Accra, Ghana. A total of 863 individuals participated after G*Power 3.1 was utilized to calculate the minimum sample size. We analysed the data with Pearson's correlation test and hierarchical linear regression models. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to select the ultimate confounding variables. The study found a positive influence of neighbourhood walkability on social activity after the covariate adjustment (β = 0.18; t = 5.2; p = 0.000). The positive influence of neighbourhood walkability on social activity was significantly reduced by ASN lost and SSN. ASN did not have a significant moderating influence on the primary relationship. The study concludes that the positive influence of walkable neighbourhoods on social activity decreases as SSN and ASN lost increase.

Individual Disaster Preparedness in Drought-and-Flood-Prone Villages in Northwest China: Impact of Place, Out-Migration and Community.

Rural communities are generally more vulnerable to natural hazards when compared to urban communities. Moreover, rural communities are diverse and unique in their place, population, agricultural production and culture, which make it challenging for different rural settings to prepare for disasters. There is a little comparison made about the individual disaster preparedness among rural communities with different geographic landforms. In this study, we examined the individual disaster preparedness of rural residents in three drought-and-flood-prone villages with different landforms (plains, loess plateau and mountains) via a cross-sectional self-report structured questionnaire survey conducted in Northwest China. We also adopted an ecological framework to examine the determinants of villagers’ individual disaster preparedness across different dimensions: place, individual sociodemographic factors, family socioeconomic status, hazard adaptations, community and neighbourhood influences. We found that place was a significant factor for disaster preparedness when controlling individual sociodemographic and family socioeconomic factors. The level of preparedness in the plains was higher than both mountains and plateau. Moreover, the villagers who had out-migrated to work reported a higher level of disaster preparedness than did local villagers. In addition, the community and neighbourhood played an important role in determining individual disaster preparedness. This research highlights the needs for tailored community-based disaster risk reduction programs to improve villagers’ knowledge and skills of disaster preparedness.

Latent Variables Quantifying Neighborhood Characteristics and Their Associations with Poor Mental Health.

Neighborhood characteristics can have profound impacts on resident mental health, but the wide variability in methodologies used across studies makes it difficult to reach a consensus as to the implications of these impacts. The aim of this study was to simplify the assessment of neighborhood influence on mental health. We used a factor analysis approach to reduce the multi-dimensional assessment of a neighborhood using census tracts and demographic data available from the American Community Survey (ACS). Multivariate quantitative characterization of the neighborhood was derived by performing a factor analysis on the 2011–2015 ACS data. The utility of the latent variables was examined by determining the association of these factors with poor mental health measures from the 500 Cities Project 2014–2015 data (2017 release). A five-factor model provided the best fit for the data. Each factor represents a complex multi-dimensional construct. However, based on heuristics and for simplicity we refer to them as (1) Affluence, (2) Singletons in Tract, (3) African Americans in Tract, (4) Seniors in Tract, and (5) Hispanics or Latinos in Tract. African Americans in Tract (with loadings showing larger numbers of people who are black, single moms, and unemployed along with fewer people who are white) and Affluence (with loadings showing higher income, education, and home value) were strongly associated with poor mental health (, ). These findings demonstrate the utility of this factor model for future research focused on the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and resident mental health.

Análisis Espacial de la Inseguridad Percibida en Barcelona: el Papel de los Barrios Adyacentes y de los Factores Psicosociales Implicados

This research analyses the factors that could be involved in the insecurity perceived by the inhabitants of 69 neighbourhoods in Barcelona from the possible influence of the adjacent neighbourhoods. A set of variables are constructed from different sources to measure their influence on the insecurity perceived by residents. Ordinary least-squares regression models were replaced by others that consider the spatial dependence of the data. The results show that when controlling for the influence of adjacent neighbourhoods, ethnic heterogeneity, satisfaction with police services, social disorder, and socio-economic status are significantly related with the insecurity perceived in each neighbourhood. However, when spatial autocorrelation is corrected, crime density in the neighbourhood is not related to perceptions of insecurity, nor there is clear evidence that insecurity is affected by crime levels in adjacent neighbourhoods.

Disentangling individual, school, and neighborhood effects on screen time among adolescents and young adults in the United States

ObjectivesTo examine the association between individual, neighborhood, and school-level influences on individual screen time among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. MethodsWe classified screen time continuously as self-reported total hours per week of television, videos, and video/computer games at baseline and categorical as extended screen time (≥14 h per week). We fit cross-classified multilevel models (CCMM) to examine to examine the individual-, school- and neighborhood-level demographic and socioeconomic factors associated with screen time. Models were fit using MLwiN with Bayesian estimation procedures. ResultsAYAs reported an average of 22.8 (SD = 19.4) and 21.9 (SD = 20.3) hours of screen time, respectively. At the individual level, younger age, male sex, Black/multiracial race, receipt of public assistance, and lower parental education were associated with higher screen time. At the school level, being out of session (i.e., school and national holidays including summer), having a higher proportion of non-White students, and having a lower proportion of parents with a college education were associated with higher individual screen time. ConclusionsWe found that individual-level factors most influence youth screen time, with smaller contributions from school factors.

The Mediating Role of Parents and School in Peer Aggression Problems

Starting from the ecological framework, the present study aimed to examine the mediating effects of parental supervision and school climate on the relationship between exosystem variables (time spent with media and perceived neighbourhood dangerousness) and peer aggression problems (peer aggression and victimisation). The participants were 880 primary school students. The data were analysed with multiple regression. The results show that both mediators (parental supervision and school climate) have statistically significant partial mediating effects on peer aggression and victimisation. If students experienced more parental supervision, there was a decrease in the relationship between a) time spent with media and peer aggression, and b) perceived neighbourhood dangerousness and peer aggression and victimisation. Identical findings were obtained for positive school climate. Thus, positive school climate and parental supervision served as protective factors against the negative influence of dangerous neighbourhoods and excessive use of media on peer aggression problems.

Cross-covariance based affinity for graphs.

The accuracy of graph based learning techniques relies on the underlying topological structure and affinity between data points, which are assumed to lie on a smooth Riemannian manifold. However, the assumption of local linearity in a neighborhood does not always hold true. Hence, the Euclidean distance based affinity that determines the graph edges may fail to represent the true connectivity strength between data points. Moreover, the affinity between data points is influenced by the distribution of the data around them and must be considered in the affinity measure. In this paper, we propose two techniques, CCGAL and CCGAN that use cross-covariance based graph affinity (CCGA) to represent the relation between data points in a local region. CCGAL also explores the additional connectivity between data points which share a common local neighborhood. CCGAN considers the influence of respective neighborhoods of the two immediately connected data points, which further enhance the affinity measure. Experimental results of manifold learning on synthetic datasets show that CCGA is able to represent the affinity measure between data points more accurately. This results in better low dimensional representation. Manifold regularization experiments on standard image dataset further indicate that the proposed CCGA based affinity is able to accurately identify and include the influence of the data points and its common neighborhood that increase the classification accuracy. The proposed method outperforms the existing state-of-the-art manifold regularization methods by a significant margin.

Adolescents\xb4 Perceptions, Neighbourhood Characteristics and Parental Monitoring -Are they Related, and Do they Interact in the Explanation of Adolescent Offending?

Children are nested in families, and families are nested within communities (e.g. neighbourhoods). This implies that the behaviour of both children and their parents is influenced by external and contextual factors. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between parental monitoring and neighbourhood disorder and collective efficacy from the perspective of the adolescent and to investigate how perceived monitoring and neighbourhood characteristics were related to and interact in predicting adolescent offending. The characteristics of the adolescent’s neighbourhoods were assessed using two different data sources: adolescents’ own perceptions and an independent, aggregated measure from a community survey. The analyses showed that the adolescents’ perceptions of neighbourhood level of disorder and collective efficacy were associated with both adolescent-perceived parental monitoring and adolescent offending, while the corresponding measures from the community survey were not. As regards the prediction of offending, adolescent-perceived parental monitoring is the most important predictor. Neither collective efficacy nor disorder appear to interact with parental monitoring in explaining adolescent offending. Future research would contribute to the field by examining the effect and interaction between the study variables in a sample with younger adolescents as well as by including parents’ perceptions. As to practical implications, our results indicate that families living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods may benefit from targeted support aimed at handling negative neighbourhood influences.

Measuring the influence of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition with the N400: Evidence for semantic scaffolding

Research in visual word recognition has shown that phonological neighborhood density facilitates visual word recognition. The current research was designed to determine the electrophysiological effect of phonological neighborhood density (PND). In two experiments, participants made lexical decisions to words varying on phonological neighborhood while Event-related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Behaviorally, the results replicate previous research by showing that words with many phonological neighbors were responded to more rapidly than were words with few phonological neighbors. However, the main contribution of the current research is that it shows an effect of PND on the N400 and Late Positive Component Event-Related Potentials. In contrast to previous reports in the literature, the nature of the effect was such that the N400 was larger to words with few phonological neighbors than to words with many. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and provided estimates of the independent components’ time course and source localization. The increased N400 for small neighborhood words is thought to reflect additional semantic processing required for these words due their weaker phonological representations.

Nearby Neighbourhood Influences on Adolescent Offending

Abstract This study extends recent research on the spatial dynamics of neighbourhood disadvantage and youth offending. Data include self-reported offences from 794 Dutch adolescents and the socio-economic status in their residential neighbourhood and the surrounding community. The findings reveal that youth engage in the highest levels of offending when they reside in disadvantaged neighbourhoods surrounded by neighbourhoods characterized by relative affluence. This spatial pattern is attributable to greater temptations to offend, reduced parental monitoring, and more frequent involvement in unstructured activities among youths who live in close proximity to neighbourhoods more affluent than their own. This study highlights the importance of criminogenic opportunities and parental monitoring for understanding the spatial dynamics of neighbourhood disadvantage on offending.

How basic access to electricity stimulates temporally increasing load demands by households in rural developing communities

Small solar home systems (SHS) have emerged as potential alternatives to grid electrification in rural sub-Saharan Africa, enabling households to make modest investments into their power systems, and to modify those systems according to their changing incomes and power demands. In this work investigate how introduction of rural unelectrified households to basic electricity temporally stimulates increasing power demands. We use survey-gathered data to show that once households get access to basic electricity, they begin to realise its socio-economic benefits and start to desire more luxurious appliances, especially through social pressure and neighbourhood influence. These desires are realised temporally with activities that lead to increasing households' incomes, leading to increasing loads, and thus to the modifications of the originally installed small SHS, to meet those increasing load demands. Eventually, cumulative increasing loads within a given community could lead to extensions of the grid to that area, as total power demands now justify such investments. Basic SHS therefore potentially act as grid-electrification stimulators, leading to eventual grid electrification of a given community; as an electrification policy, developing communities should consider seeding unelectrified areas with SHS to stimulate power demands for eventual grid electrification.

Frugivores vary in their response to neighborhood effects in a novel ecosystem

Seed dispersal is critical for maintaining ecosystem structure and over half of plant species worldwide rely on animals for dispersal. Animal-mediated seed dispersal requires tight links between animals and plants. The introduction of invasive species threatens this mutualism by potentially creating competition between native and invasive plants for dispersers and by altering the consumption of native fruits by introduced dispersers. Although the first critical step in seed dispersal is fruit consumption, we have limited knowledge of the characteristics that attract dispersers to a given plant. In particular, characteristics of the neighborhood surrounding a plant may alter frugivory and frugivores may vary in their responses to these characteristics. Identification of key neighborhood characteristics would help to identify the mechanisms which facilitate or limit seed dispersal, aiding in the management of species in novel ecosystems. We deployed camera traps on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi to quantify how the total fruit abundance, percent invasive fruit, percent conspecific fruit, canopy cover, and ground vegetation density of the neighborhood influence visitation and fruit removal by introduced avian frugivores. Results showed that neighborhood effects had little influence on frugivory overall, but did influence avian foraging groups in disparate ways. In particular, visitation by arboreal foragers increased with canopy cover and the amount of fruit on the focal plant but decreased with higher neighborhood fruit abundance and more conspecific fruit. Ground forager visitation decreased with higher ground vegetation density and increased with more conspecific fruit. These findings suggest the neighborhood can be modified to facilitate arboreal foragers, which are higher quality dispersers on Oʻahu, and to limit ground foragers, which are primarily seed predators. We argue studies should consider differences among dispersers to adequately address the role of the neighborhood on frugivory in environments with multiple disperser species.

Perceptions of police and participatory behavior for crime prevention: a multilevel analysis of formal and informal behaviors

This study examines relationships between attitudes toward police and informal as well as formal participatory behaviors for neighborhood crime prevention, while considering neighborhood influences on individuals’ behaviors. Utilizing data from Ross Matsueda’s Seattle Neighborhoods and Crime Survey of 2220 households, this study examined relationships between perceptions of police—satisfaction and cynicism about police activities in dealing with residents’ concerns—and participatory behaviors. Consistent with the legitimacy argument, results demonstrated that individuals with more positive perceptions of police service participate more in neighborhood crime prevention in both formal and informal ways. One notable neighborhood factor was community social ties which potentially moderates associations between perceptions of police and participatory behaviors. Implications for crime prevention policy are discussed.

Abstract P115: The Epidemiological Profile Of CKD Among African American Men And Women: Findings From The Jackson Heart Study

The prevalence of CKD is paramount. CKD affects almost 1 in 7 adults in the United States and is associated with increased rates of cardiovascular disease. While African Americans make up about 13 percent of the population, they account for 35 percent of the people with kidney failure in the United States. The prevalence of early CKD is equivalent across racial and ethnic groups in the United States, but CKD progresses to end-stage renal disease far more rapidly in minority populations, with rates nearly four times higher in African Americans than in whites. The purpose of this study is to address the emergence of chronic disease complications in the African American community that focuses on associations with prevalent CKD outcomes in the JHS. Epidemiological study design used to access the preliminary data to derive conclusions about CKD. CKD was assessed by the JHS participants, who self-reported their CKD status/history. CKD was measured using the Renal form and History of CKD form that was given as a questionnaire within the JHS during Examination 1 Period. CKD was measured by Jackson Heart Study’s estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) <60 mL/min/1.73 m2 to determine CKD status. African Americans have a disproportionate burden of CKD, which tends to have an earlier onset and a more rapid progression in this population. From a population health standpoint, CKD factors such as smoking, diabetes, history of hypertension, dietary patterns, physical activity, blood apolipoproteins and psychosocial factors account for more than 90% of the population-attributable risk. African American men and women with CKD is viewed among the highest-risk groups for cardiovascular events and disease. Race and ethnicity are associated with sociocultural and biologic variations that influence the risk and progression of CKD. Understanding these factors for minority populations can help in targeting interventions to decrease the disproportionately high rates of CKD progression and complications. As prevalence of chronic disease increased, public health’s focus on health- related behaviors and risk factors shifted the discipline’s attention to considering the neighborhood's influence on social determinants of health.

Heterogeneous Graph Convolutional Networks and Matrix Completion for miRNA-Disease Association Prediction.

Due to the cost and complexity of biological experiments, many computational methods have been proposed to predict potential miRNA-disease associations by utilizing known miRNA-disease associations and other related information. However, there are some challenges for these computational methods. First, the relationships between miRNAs and diseases are complex. The computational network should consider the local and global influence of neighborhoods from the network. Furthermore, predicting disease-related miRNAs without any known associations is also very important. This study presents a new computational method that constructs a heterogeneous network composed of a miRNA similarity network, disease similarity network, and known miRNA-disease association network. The miRNA similarity considers the miRNAs and their possible families and clusters. The information of each node in heterogeneous network is obtained by aggregating neighborhood information with graph convolutional networks (GCNs), which can pass the information of a node to its intermediate and distant neighbors. Disease-related miRNAs with no known associations can be predicted with the reconstructed heterogeneous matrix. We apply 5-fold cross-validation, leave-one-disease-out cross-validation, and global and local leave-one-out cross-validation to evaluate our method. The corresponding areas under the curves (AUCs) are 0.9616, 0.9946, 0.9656, and 0.9532, confirming that our approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Case studies show that this approach can effectively predict new diseases without any known miRNAs.

“Placing” the relation of social media participation to neighborhood community connection

ABSTRACT While the association of social media to neighborhood community connection (belongingness, cooperation, and trust with neighbors) has been explored, the influence of neighborhoods in this association has been left out of the inquiry. It is not clear whether the association of social media participation and community connection is independent from neighborhood context. To explore the influence of neighborhoods in this relationship, we utilized hierarchical linear models with individual data from the 2014/2015 Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey and neighborhood data from the 2010–2014 American Community Survey. Measuring social media participation based upon people’s usage of social networking sites to seek out services, we find social media is related to neighborhood community connection, regardless of where one lives. In other words, social media usage does not necessarily diminish one’s sense of neighborhood community. Neighborhood residential stability slightly moderates this relationship, demonstrating neighborhoods matter in social media’s relation to neighborhood community.