Neighborhood Condition Effects on Latina/O Student Attendance and Participation in Afterschool Activities

ABSTRACT

This study examined how parents’ perception of neighborhood conditions are associated with school absenteeism and participation in afterschool activities, and how social support networks moderate those linkages among two-parent and single-parent families. Data from the second and third Waves of the Making Connections Survey were analyzed. A subsample of 1,053 Latina/o parents with 10–17-year-old children was examined. Longitudinal path analyses suggest an indirect positive association between neighborhood control and participation in organized afterschool activities via instrumental social support, but only among two-parent families. Neighborhood cohesion was associated with school days missed and participation in organized afterschool activities among single-parent families. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Afterschool participation
• family structure
• instrumental support
• neighborhood conditions
• school absenteeism

Acknowledgments

Parts of this research project were presented in Phoenix, Arizona at the Society for Research in Child Development Special Topic Meeting: Conference on the Use of Secondary and Open Source Data in Developmental Science. The author wishes to thank the families who participated in this study. A special thanks is dedicated to Kate Bachtell, Cathy Haggerty, and NORC at the University of Chicago for their mentorship and feedback on this research project. This research was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Annie E. Casey Foundation or NORC at the University of Chicago. The data used in this study are managed by NORC at the University of Chicago and are available upon request through the NORC data enclave.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Emerging Scholars Fellowship.