Adolescents' Perceptions of Safety and Community Social Trust: A Philadelphia Case

background/purpose:

The built and social environment of communities impact adolescent health outcomes in a plethora of ways, including emotional and physical well-being. While it is known that objective conditions of neighborhoods impact perceptions of safety, little is known about how perceptions of safety vary as a function of community social trust.

methods:

GIS-assisted interviews were conducted with 139 African American males, aged 10-18, in Philadelphia. Subjects mapped their daily activities and reported their perceived safety. Activity paths were overlaid on mapped layers of the built and social environment. Social trust was built as a census-tract level composite variable using several indicators from a telephone survey. Mixed effects regression estimated how subjects’ perceived safety varied as a function of social trust, controlling for age and other confounding variables.

results/outcomes:

Results showed that when compared to spending time in areas in the lowest tertile of social trust, older adolescents were 73 percent more likely to feel unsafe (p < 0.01) when in areas with medium social trust and 89 percent more likely to feel unsafe (p < 0.01) when in areas of high social trust.

conclusions:

Our results call into question the protective nature of social trust in regards to perceptions of safety. Community-level interventions intended to improve feelings of safety among adolescents should take into account subjective features of the environment and levels of social trust.