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Science 15 August 1997:
Vol. 277. no. 5328, pp. 918 - 924
DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5328.918
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Research Articles

Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy

Robert J. Sampson, Stephen W. Raudenbush, Felton Earls

It is hypothesized that collective efficacy, defined as social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good, is linked to reduced violence. This hypothesis was tested on a 1995 survey of 8782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois. Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics, measurement error, and prior violence are controlled. Associations of concentrated disadvantage and residential instability with violence are largely mediated by collective efficacy.

R. J. Sampson is in the Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637 and is a Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. S. W. Raudenbush is at the College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. F. Earls is the Principal Investigator of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and is at the School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

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