Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Participation in organized activities outside of school can prevent poor outcomes in at risk children and youth. Among other things, these activities foster relations with peers and adults, add to knowledge and skills and provide supervision. Other positive benefits include contributing to social and cultural capital. However, the degree to which out of school activities can have a protective effect may depend on getting enough children involved with sufficient regularity so that they and their communities can benefit. Especially in low income communities, though, there may be barriers to involving at risk children and youth in out of school programs at the requisite levels. This study examined the degree to which parental involvement in the community and perceived neighborhood safety affected participation in out of school activity in low income neighborhoods. The study hypothesized that children of parents who themselves participated in community activities would have higher attendance in out of school programs because such parents would have access to more social and cultural capital. Also, participation was expected to be higher in neighborhoods perceived by residents as safe because fear might deter attendance in dangerous areas.The data come from a survey of 7496 households (2456 with children 5-17) carried out as part of Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections Initiative. Probability samples were drawn from low income neighborhoods in ten cities (Denver, Des Moines, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, Oakland, Providence, San Antonio and Seattle). Neighborhood safety was measured by a 6 item scale (alpha reliability =.70; aggregate reliability=.58). Participation in out of school activities was measured using an ordinal scale of frequency of participation and a binary measure of regular participation. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling (HGLM) was used to estimate two-level models in which households with children were nested in within 128 census tracts (a proxy for neighborhood). Results show that, after controlling for a number of child and family characteristics, children whose parents were involved in the community were 2.5 times more likely to participate in out of school activities. Neighborhood safety had a positive effect on participation, increasing it on average by about 30% for a one unit increase in safety score. However, there were significant cross-level interactions between ethnicity and safety, with safety having a weaker influence on participation rates among African American and Hispanic children than Caucasians and other ethnic groups. The implications are that out of school activities programs will achieve greater success when they are part of a context in which adults are also encouraged to become involved in the community. Additionally, out of school programs need to include provisions for keeping children safe in neighborhoods where lack of safety is a problem. Even though unsafe conditions take less of a toll on participation rates for African-American and Hispanic children than for whites and Asians, there are probably other consequences of traversing unsafe environments that were not studied here but deserve further investigation.