MEASUREMENT EQUIVALENCE OF NEIGHBORHOOD QUALITY MEASURES FOR EUROPEAN AMERICAN AND MEXICAN AMERICAN FAMILIES

In the past decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in the effects of neighborhood context upon the lives of children and families. The use of contextual and ecological frameworks, which stress person-environment interactions and contextual influences on individual and family outcomes (Bronfenbrenner, 1981), has resulted in a body of extant literature that links certain neighborhood characteristics to a host of negative outcomes. For example, research with European American and African American families demonstrates that neighborhood quality is related to school readiness and achievement, dropout rates, delinquency, and behavioral problems, even after controlling for family characteristics such as income and education (Elliot et al., 1996; Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff, 2000). Together, these studies suggest that children who live in neighborhoods in which indicators of disadvantage or disorder are high run a greater risk of becoming involved in misconduct and delinquent behaviors than do their peers in safer and more prosperous neighborhoods. Methodological and sampling problems have plagued much of the research on neighborhoods, leaving many questions regarding how neighborhoods can be salient sources of risk and protection for children and families (Roosa, Jones, Tein, & Cree, 2003). For example, because the majority of these studies used samples of European American and African American descent, the generalizability of the findings to Latino populations is not well known. It is thus critical to address the psychometric properties of neighborhood quality measures for the Latino population. Mexican Americans are the largest Latino group in the United States, accounting for about 60% of the Latino population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Mexican Americans have the second highest rates of poverty among Latinos in the United States, behind Puerto Ricans (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003), the highest drop-out rate, and increased levels of academic difficulties compared to both the majority population and other minority groups (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). The high number of Mexican Americans living in low-income neighborhoods, combined with elevated prevalence rates for negative outcomes in these neighborhoods, suggests that it is important for researchers to understand how neighborhood characteristics affect the lives of Mexican American families. Before doing so, it is important to establish that measures of neighborhood quality are equivalent for both Spanish- and English-speaking Mexican Americans, as well as for English-speaking European Americans. Tests of measurement equivalence provide a mechanism by which researchers can establish whether a measure is similarly reliable and valid across different ethnic and language groups (Knight & Hill, 1998). There are at least two mechanisms by which the equivalence of neighborhood measures in Latino populations may be compromised: (a) differences in experiences related to one’s personal historical background, and (b) translation issues. The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of a self-report measure of neighborhood quality to determine the degree to which it is equivalent across ethnic and language groups. Using measures that demonstrate equivalence provides assurance that the research findings represent effects that are due solely to the construct of interest and not to other sources, such as measurement error. Lack of measurement equivalence calls into question the validity of results obtained for different ethnic/cultural and language groups (Knight & Hill, 1998). For example, the construct of neighborhood quality could vary across groups if different groups conceive of neighborhood quality dissimilarly and use different indicators to assess it (Crockett, Randall, Shen, Russell, & Driscoll, 2005). Thus, a measure developed using samples of primarily European Americans and African Americans may not address the salient features of this construct for another group. In addition, even if different groups conceptualized the construct in similar ways, the items used in assessment may be better indicators of the construct of interest for one group than another (Crockett et al., 2005). If measures are nonequivalent, it is difficult to determine whether similarities or differences observed in neighborhood quality scores across different groups reflect true findings in the underlying construct or whether they are a result of measurement bias (Knight, Virdin, & Roosa, 1994). This would suggest that any policy or intervention strategies based upon potentially inaccurate information would likely be ineffective in achieving the desired change (Crockett et al., 2005).