The Elderly in Poor Urban Neighborhoods by Valerie Slaughter Brown

Author:Valerie Slaughter Brown [Brown, Valerie Slaughter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Urban, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9781351716666
Google: mKU5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-10-12T04:38:09+00:00

Residential Satisfaction

The intervening variable is residential satisfaction. Residential satisfaction is multidimensional and includes 1) neighborhood satisfaction, 2) housing satisfaction, and 3) desire to move (see Table 6). The literature demonstrates that environmental influence gets translated into SWB through the path of residential satisfaction (see chapters 2 and 3 for more theoretical discussion).

To obtain information about residential satisfaction and other neighborhood characteristics, respondents were first told the geographical boundaries of their census tract (i.e., streets bordering the north, south, east and west) (Northern Ohio Data & Information Services, 1991b). In this study, the neighborhood was defined by the census tract. Subjects were then asked questions relevant to residential satisfaction.

The use of census tract geographical boundaries served to standardize the neighborhood concept and associated suprapersonal environment parameters for study subjects. This facilitated comparisons in the analysis of data. Lack of standardization of the neighborhood concept has been a major weakness in studies about residential satisfaction (Lawton, 1980a).

Neighborhood satisfaction was measured with three items, two of which were specifically about neighborhood satisfaction: 1) “To what extent do you feel your present neighborhood is a good place for you (and your family) to live?”; and 2) “I am dissatisfied with my neighborhood as a place to live”. The third item concerned the quality of houses in the neighborhood: 3) “I rate the quality of the houses in my neighborhood as generally good.” Housing satisfaction was evaluated with two items about level of satisfaction with the dwelling: 1) “How satisfied are you with your present house or apartment as a place to live?”; and 2) “I am dissatisfied with my house or apartment.” Desire to move was measured using two items: 1) “How much do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘At the present time, I have no desire to move from where I’m currently living”’; and 2) “How much do you want to move at this time?”

Two five-point response categories ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘not at all’ to ‘very much’ were used to measure subject response. High scores were indicative of a weak desire to move and great satisfaction with housing and neighborhood. Scales of this nature are frequently used in the literature (Galster & Hesser, 1981; Golant, 1982; Jirovec, Jirovec & Bosse, 1985; Lawton, 1980b).

An index of residential satisfaction was obtained by adding standardized scores of the items about housing and neighborhood satisfaction and desire to move. Standardized scores were used to give equal weight to each of the items comprising the index of residential satisfaction. Prior research provides support for this method for determining overall residential satisfaction (Jirovec et al., 1985). The residential satisfaction scale had a general alpha coefficient =. 77 (see Table 6).

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