The Making Connections study was designed to inform an initiative aimed at improving neighborhood conditions for families with children. While not initially designed for academic purposes, the Making Connections Survey was conducted in accordance with scientific standards and addresses topics of great interest to researchers in the fields of economics, psychology, public health, public policy, social work, and sociology. The survey examines mobility, social capital and networks, neighborhood processes, resident perceptions and participation, economic hardship, the availability and utilization of services and resources, and child and adolescent well-being. The dataset includes both a cross section of disadvantaged urban neighborhood residents and longitudinal data for families with children at three points in time, over a ten year period. In each of the ten Making Connections sites baseline and wave 2 data were collected from 800 households. A third wave of data were collected from 800 households in seven of the ten sites. In this panel young researchers using these data present findings across a spectrum of topics. Megan Gilster presents data about neighborhood engagement, residential tenure and social ties. Anita Zuberi examines neighborhood distress, in the form of both physical and social conditions, and child health outcomes. Amanda Roy looks at neighborhood characteristics and how they play a role in child health and the ability to access health care. Julia Burdick-Will describes the consequences of non-local school attendance on neighborhood perception. Finally, Carlos Siordia uses the digitized data from hand drawn maps to investigate how computational geometry can be used to determine concentricity and to explore the variation as a function of age, sex and educational attainment.
Neighborhood Social Processes, Access to Health Care, and Child Health Amanda L. Roy, University of Illinois - Chicago
Low-Income Neighborhoods and Child Health: Assessing the Influence of Physical and Social Neighborhood Conditions on Childhood Health Anita Zuberi, Samantha; Teixeira
Mobility and Social Support: Barriers to Resident Participation in Making Connections Neighborhoods Megan E. Gilster, University of Iowa
Using Hand Draw “Residential Neighborhood” to Compute Polygon Concentricity and Investigate its Predictors Carlos Siordia, University of Pittsburgh; Claudia Colton
Decoupling Schools and Neighborhoods: Using Making Connections to Understand How Opting Out of Local Schools Shapes Neighborhood Perceptions Julia Burdick-Will, Johns Hopkins University
