Collective Efficacy and Its Effect on Witnessed Violence and Neighborhood Disorganization

Background

Despite a steady decline in rates of violent crime in the United States, the majority of Americans report a belief that violent crimes are rising. At the same time, formal systems of social control, such as policing, are occupying increasingly illegitimate positions in communities with greater vulnerabilities. The concept of collective efficacy seeks to explain community-level outcomes through interpersonal interactions, whereas communities with both strong interactions between neighbors and a willingness to intervene on behalf of a common good will lessen the conditions for violent behavior and disorganization at the community level. Collective efficacy has, however, been criticized in being unclear as to how its two components, informal social control and social cohesion, interact with each other. I aimed to add to the neighborhood effects research on collective efficacy and its association with (a) the number of violent acts witnessed by community members, and (b) the level of perceived neighborhood social disorganization.

Methods

Data and Samples: Data for this study were drawn from Part 1 of Warner’s (2000) study on the effect of cultural disorganization on informal social control within the context of two Kentucky neighborhoods with high-levels of drug use. Participants (N=2,304) completed a survey regarding their perceptions of their neighborhood. Respondents were relatively evenly distributed by race (49% White, 51% Black), as well as homeownership (50% rent, 50% own). The majority of respondents identified as female (67%), and the mean age was 46 years old.

Measures and Analysis: The analysis consisted of two hierarchical multiple regression models. The first model examined the relationship between social cohesion and informal social control and the perception of interpersonal violence in the neighborhood. The second model measured the relationship between the two dependent variables and the perception of social disorganization of the neighborhood.

Results

Results from the first analysis supported prior research, in that perception of higher levels of violence in the neighborhood were associated with a decrease in collective efficacy (p < .05). When examining each component separately, however, social cohesion was not significantly related to perceived neighborhood violence. Further, the overall relationship was weak, with less than one percent of the total variance in perceived neighborhood violence being explained by informal social control. Perceived social disorganization within the neighborhood, contrary to hypotheses, was associated with an increased likelihood of endorsing both informal social control (𝛽 = -.377, p < .001) and social cohesion (𝛽 = .145, p < .001).

Implications

The findings offer a complicated view of how the model of collective efficacy relates to how individuals perceive their neighborhoods, offering support for viewing informal social control and social cohesion as two separate constructs. Social work researchers engaging with communities should take care to understand how each of these constructs may be reactions to problems within neighborhoods, and how either can be harnessed for social change. Future research would benefit from examining collective efficacy as both a composite and decompose the constructs of social cohesion and informal social control to better understand how each might operate differently.