Research Project #1 In Steven Elias Alvarado’s Study, Delayed Disadvantage: Neighborhood Context and Child Development, he discusses how children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods may impact cognitive development. The Unit of Analysis in this study is the individuals, in that he analyzes the children over time. Whereas many previous neighborhood studies of cognitive and behavior outcomes have been restricted to cross-sections or very short snapshots, which has “limit[ed] our understanding of whether age acts as a moderator for neighborhood effects on these outcomes”(2), he has chosen to use longitudinal data. He uses Cohort Panel Studies, in that he measures the same sample of children and same cohort (children 5-14 years old) at different
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He states that he “followed previous research and operationalized my main explanatory variable, neighborhood disadvantage, by first creating a scale so as to more accurately capture a multidimensional underlying contextual disadvantage (Harding 2009; Shih et al. 2012). This scale, which I created using the entire 13 waves of NLSY:CYA data, is the mean of the following seven standardized variables: percent of residents at or below 100 percent of the poverty threshold as de ned by the US Census Bureau, the percent of residents who are unemployed, the percent of residents out of the labor force, the percent who have at least a bachelor’s degree (reverse coded), the percent of managers and professionals in the neighborhood (reverse coded), median income (reverse coded), and the median housing value (reverse …show more content…
He focuses on how the area they grow up in ultimately affects the individual’s outcome, especially their cognitive ability as well as behavior problems. As Alvarado puts it: “Children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills develop very rapidly as they transition from childhood to adolescence, a period when they are maturing both physically and emotionally and are increasing their interaction with a diverse set of individuals, ideas, and demands (Collins and van Dulmen 2006). Children’s development, which may be influenced by their neighborhoods, in this period, has a direct impact on educational attainment, emotional adjustment, and social functioning in late adolescence and in adulthood (Huston and Ripke
He states that he “followed previous research and operationalized my main explanatory variable, neighborhood disadvantage, by first creating a scale so as to more accurately capture a multidimensional underlying contextual disadvantage (Harding 2009; Shih et al. 2012). This scale, which I created using the entire 13 waves of NLSY:CYA data, is the mean of the following seven standardized variables: percent of residents at or below 100 percent of the poverty threshold as de ned by the US Census Bureau, the percent of residents who are unemployed, the percent of residents out of the labor force, the percent who have at least a bachelor’s degree (reverse coded), the percent of managers and professionals in the neighborhood (reverse coded), median income (reverse coded), and the median housing value (reverse …show more content…
He focuses on how the area they grow up in ultimately affects the individual’s outcome, especially their cognitive ability as well as behavior problems. As Alvarado puts it: “Children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills develop very rapidly as they transition from childhood to adolescence, a period when they are maturing both physically and emotionally and are increasing their interaction with a diverse set of individuals, ideas, and demands (Collins and van Dulmen 2006). Children’s development, which may be influenced by their neighborhoods, in this period, has a direct impact on educational attainment, emotional adjustment, and social functioning in late adolescence and in adulthood (Huston and Ripke