DOI: 10.7910/dvn/xwanos
title: Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods: Systematic Social Observation, 1994-1998

description: 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.
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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.
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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.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

The main objective of the Systematic Social Observation (SSO) was to measure the effects of neighborhood characteristics upon young people's development, specifically the variables associated with youth violence. SSO is a standardized approach for directly observing the physical, social, and economic characteristics of neighborhoods, one block at a time.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

In 1995, the PHDCN initiated a combined person-based and video-taped approach to collecting systematic observations of neighborhood. 80 of the 343 Neighborhood Clusters were used in this study. Once the sampling was complete, the block face (the block segment on one side of the street) became the unit of observation. Using videotape and observer logs, data were collected in the 80 sampled Chicago neighborhoods. Only a sample of block faces were selected for coding due to budget expenses. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) collected the data for the SSO. Between June and September of 1995, trained observers from the NORC drove a sports Utility Vehicle down every block within the 80 sampled neighborhoods. The videographer videotaped both sides of each block, while the observers recorded characteristics of each block face on observer logs. Further coding of the videotapes and observer logs were conducted by the NORC staff. Items assessed included: land use; residential housing; commercial industrial buildings; drinking establishments; recreational facilities; street conditions; security persons visible; children visible; teenagers visible; traffic; the physical condition of buildings; cigarette; cigars on street or gutter; garbage, litter on street or sidewalks; empty beer bottles visible in streets; tagging graffiti; graffiti painted over; gang graffiti; abandoned cars; condoms on sidewalk; needles/syringed on sidewalk; political message graffiti. Also assessed were: Adults loitering or congregating; people drinking alcohol; peer group; gang indicators present; people intoxicated; adults fighting or hostilely arguing; prostitution on streets; and people selling drugs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

The Murray Archive holds additional analogue materials for this study (videotaped data from this wave of data collection). If you would like to access this material, please apply to use the data.