Abstract
This research tests the reproducibility of the neighborhood-level effects of social composition and collective efficacy on community violence that Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls reported in a Science article entitled “Neighborhood and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Based upon data from a resident survey, the U.S. Census, and official homicide reports from Chicago, Sampson et al. found that neighborhood collective efficacy directly affects perceived neighborhood violence, household victimization, and homicide rates. In addition, they reported that the relationship between residential stability and concentrated disadvantage with each measure of violence is mediated after adding their collective efficacy measure to the regression models. This article uses Earls, Brooks-Gunn, Raudenbush, and Sampson’s archived data collection and other archived data collections to assess the extent to which Sampson et al.’s core substantive findings are independently reproducible. While the reanalysis identified some differences between the archived data and the information provided in Sampson et al., the reanalysis produced findings in the same reported direction and statistical significance for virtually all of Sampson et al.’s core substantive outcomes. This confirmation of their key conclusions provides added confidence in their collective efficacy thesis and enhances the prospects for extending it by assessing the degree to which it also affects other crime types and whether these effects persist over time.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 245-265 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2018 |
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The National Institute of Justice (grant no. 2008-IJ-CX-0013 and IAA no. 2008-IJ-R-012) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (award nos. 03-78938-000-HCD and 07-89865-000-HCD) supported this research. The points of view expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the MacArthur Foundation, Michigan State University, Portland State University, or Northwestern University. We wish to thank ICPSR’s Kaye Marz and Brent Phillips for preparing PHDCN data for this article and the three anonymous reviewers for providing us with helpful direction and comments. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The National Institute of Justice (grant no. 2008-IJ-CX-0013 and IAA no. 2008-IJ-R-012) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (award nos. 03-78938-000-HCD and 07-89865-000-HCD) supported this research. The points of view expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the MacArthur Foundation, Michigan State University, Portland State University, or Northwestern University. While our empirical results are not identical to Sampson et al.’s (1997) findings, our pattern of outcomes parallels their results. The consistency between our findings and Sampson et al.’s (1997) published findings attests to the overall quality of their work. This effort to reproduce was possible only because the National Institute of Justice and the MacArthur Foundation provided supplemental financial support for documenting and archiving these data. While their effort exceeded common practices across social sciences during late 1990s, the inclusion of syntax programs written to select cases, calculate measures, and produce regression outcomes would have facilitated our effort to reproduce their results.
Keywords
- collective efficacy
- neighborhood
- violence
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Law
