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Neighborhood Crime-Related Safety and Its Relation to Children’s Physical Activity

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Abstract

Crime is both a societal safety and public health issue. Examining different measures and aspects of crime-related safety and their correlations may provide insight into the unclear relationship between crime and children’s physical activity. We evaluated five neighborhood crime-related safety measures to determine how they were interrelated. We then explored which crime-related safety measures were associated with children’s total moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and MVPA in their neighborhoods. Significant positive correlations between observed neighborhood incivilities and parents’ perceptions of general crime and disorder were found (r = 0.30, p = 0.0002), as were associations between parents’ perceptions of general crime and disorder and perceptions of stranger danger (r = 0.30, p = 0.0002). Parent report of prior crime victimization in their neighborhood was associated with observed neighborhood incivilities (r = 0.22, p = 0.007) and their perceptions of both stranger danger (r = 0.24, p = 0.003) and general crime and disorder (r = 0.37, p < 0.0001). After accounting for covariates, police-reported crime within the census block group in which children lived was associated with less physical activity, both total and in their neighborhood (beta = −0.09, p = 0.005, beta = −0.01, p = 0.02, respectively). Neighborhood-active children living in the lowest crime-quartile neighborhoods based on police reports had 40 min more of total MVPA on average compared to neighborhood-active children living in the highest crime-quartile neighborhoods. Findings suggest that police reports of neighborhood crime may be contributing to lower children’s physical activity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all of the NIK children and parents for their participation. We would also like to thank Ms. Chris Haley of the San Diego Police Department and her team for granting the request for data and compiling the cross-street level police-reported crime data used in the current study; Dr. Matthew Dunbar, Tim Thomas, and Mike Babb of the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology for their insight and assistance with GIS and geocoding the San Diego police-reported crimes; and Dr. Robert Crutchfield, Dr. Nicole Bracy, Dr. Amy Hillier, and Dr. Kris Day for their time and insight regarding crime data.

Funding

The NIK project was supported by the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS R01 ES014240). Partial support for this research also came from a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research infrastructure grant, 5R24HD042828, to the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. Finally, the first author received training funding (NCCR TL1 RR025016) from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to conduct this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New Jersey State Department of Health, Family Centered Care Services, Trenton, NJ, USA

    Stephanie H. Kneeshaw-Price

  2. Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Stephanie H. Kneeshaw-Price, David E. Grembowski, Peggy A. Hannon & K. C. Gary Chan

  3. Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Brian E. Saelens

  4. Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA

    Brian E. Saelens

  5. Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    James F. Sallis

  6. Schools of Population and Public Health and Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Lawrence D. Frank

  7. Urban Design 4 Health, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA

    Lawrence D. Frank

  8. Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Nicholas L. Smith

  9. Seattle Epidemiologic Research and Information Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Nicholas L. Smith

  10. Group Health Research Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Nicholas L. Smith

  11. Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    K. C. Gary Chan

Authors
  1. Stephanie H. Kneeshaw-Price
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  2. Brian E. Saelens
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  3. James F. Sallis
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  4. Lawrence D. Frank
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  5. David E. Grembowski
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  6. Peggy A. Hannon
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  7. Nicholas L. Smith
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  8. K. C. Gary Chan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephanie H. Kneeshaw-Price.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the New Jersey State Department of Health.

At the time of writing, Dr. Kneeshaw-Price was affiliated with the Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

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Kneeshaw-Price, S.H., Saelens, B.E., Sallis, J.F. et al. Neighborhood Crime-Related Safety and Its Relation to Children’s Physical Activity. J Urban Health 92, 472–489 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-015-9949-0

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