Neighborhoods unite

What is Collective Efficacy Theory (CET) as Sampson and colleagues define it?

Collective efficacy theory is, as Sampson and his colleagues define, “social cohesion” and “shared expectations for control”. What I think this means is the unity of a group with similar interests and “expectations” of how things should operate.

What is the evidence that you found in the international (or non-Chicago at least) study that you read?

The study I used is one that was conducted in Denmark and reduced down to women in the health care professional field. The study simply supports their hypothesis that a work environment with high collective efficacy will have lower numbers of intentions to leave among the employees in the female health care profession, Jensen J.N., Holten A. J .N. , -L. , Karpatschof B. & Albertsen K. (2011). Sampson mentions that collective efficacy impact other things like obesity, teen pregnancy, etc. so it is not surprising to find other support for collective efficacy positively influencing other relationships. In the article I found collective efficacy is referred to as a mutual “perspective” of their competencies as taken from (Bandura, 1997). So again, perception is a big part of having collective efficacy by both definitions. Below I will use the words “appearance” and “visual” in explanations of reactions. Visual cues and appearances leading to assumptions impact personal actions on a minute to minute basis. Collective efficacy is determined by these assumptions or perspectives. Sampson also mentioned the word “action” in this chapter which I am hoping he returns to elaborate on with an action plan of his own from his research.

And how would you answer the questions that Sampson gave his respondents, asking about what they thought their neighbors would do in various situations, only with respect to your own neighborhood?

1)      Children skipping school: I feel that the neighborhood I live in would do nothing about children skipping school. If it persisted I could see individuals in my neighborhood saying something to the children asking them why they weren’t in school but most likely nothing past that. If there were children hanging on the corner I would imagine that my neighborhood would inform the police depending on the “visual type” of crowd. Personally I work with youth but I also know how many children are home-schooled in today’s society so I would probably do nothing but inquire as well.

2)      Graffiti: Depending on the “appearance” of the individual(s) doing the spray painting I think my neighborhood and me included would either chase after them yelling at them to stop and start behaving or call the police on them and follow up by getting cleaner/paint supplies to restore the building to its original appearance.

3)      Disrespect: More often than not in today’s society you can witness children disrespecting adults in public. People in my neighborhood would most likely look toward the ground and shake their heads in disgust. I personally would approach the adult and ask them why they allow the child to treat them in such a disrespectful way. Depending on the adult’s response I would follow by either ignoring their stupid response or attempt to educate them on appropriate ways to alter the situation and not allow such disrespect to take place.

4)      Fight: I would assume that no matter what type of individuals were involved the people in my neighborhood would just notify the police in a situation where a fight broke out in front of their home. The individuals in my neighborhood are mostly elderly and confrontations and/or ability to handle a physical situation is extremely limited. Personally it would depend on the “appearance” of the individuals engaged in the dispute for me to determine if I were to engage in and attempted resolution procedure or just call the police.

5)      Fire/budget cuts: I would like to think that my neighborhood would commune and gather resources to assist in funding/operating the fire station if budget cuts were the cause of closure. I would volunteer some personal time in assisting with operation if budget cuts impacted the operation of the fire station.

JENSEN J.N., HOLTEN A. J .N. , -L. , KARPATSCHOF B. & ALBERTSEN K. (2011) Does

collective efficacy moderate the associations between physical work load and

intention to leave or sickness absence? Journal of Advanced Nursing 67(11), 2425–

2434. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05674.x