Neighborhood research from a spatially oriented strengths perspective

Abstract

Research investigating neighborhood effects on children and families has been largely deficit and individual-focused, investigated structural variables, and has typically produced equivocal findings and small effect sizes. We suggest an approach focused on community strengths and resources that stresses the role of measures of social interaction variables and the utilization of analytic strategies that model the spatial and nested nature of contextual effects. To that end, we offer a community resilience model that includes both community-level risk and protective factors, and suggests sources to obtain community-level strengths data. We also provide This article is dedicated to the memory of Carol T. Mowbray. Four months after being diagnosed with advanced gall bladder cancer, Carol died on August 23, 2005, at the much too young age of 57. Carol was the organizing force in bringing the authors on this article together to explore the potential applications of spatial and multilevel methods to studying complex community-level social processes. Her unwavering strengths perspective, which she not just believed but lived, toward research, practice, colleagues, and students, is reflected in the theoretical orientation of this article. The “GIS Group ” she started has carrie