The Role of Neighborhood and Community in Building Developmental Assets for Children and Youth: A National Study of Social Norms Among American Adults

Unrelated adults play potentially important roles in the positive socialization of children and youth, but studies of adolescents suggest the majority of adults do not engage positively with young people on an intentional, frequent, and deep basis. As a result, only a minority of young people report experiencing key developmental assets that have been associated with reduced risk-taking behaviors and increased thriving. Social norms theory suggests that adults will be more likely to get deeply involved with young people outside their family if that involvement is viewed as highly important, and if they perceive a social expectation to do so. A nationally representative sample of 1,425 U.S. adults was surveyed to determine the degree of importance American adults ascribed to 19 positive asset-building actions, and the degree to which the adults they knew actually engaged with young people outside their own families in those positive ways. The results showed that only a minority of Americans experience consistent normative motivation for engaging with other people(cid:144)s children. There is a large gap between what adults consider important and what they actually do to construct positive, intentional relationships with children and youth. Community stability and extent of community-building activities in which adults engage, including participation in religious services, volunteering, and neighborhood meetings, are associated with differences among adults in the degree of normative motivation for engaging with young people. In addition to these group differences, however, there also are nine asset-building actions (cid:133)two functioning as genuine social norms and seven as social values(cid:133) that great majorities of American adults consider highly important. The foundation therefore exists in public opinion to make explicit greater permission for adults to become more deeply engaged in the lives of children outside their families and

g enuine social norms and seven as social values-that g reat maj orities of American adults consider hig hly important.
T he foundation therefore ex ists in public opinion to mak e ex plicit g reater permission for adults to become more deeply eng ag ed in the lives of children outside their families and to thereby define new normative ex pectations for all adults to share in being responsible for the well-being of young people. L os adultos no familiares j ueg an potencialmente roles importantes en la socializació n positiva de niñ os y j ó venes, pero estudios de adolescentes sug ieren q ue la mayorí a de los adultos no se involucran positivamente con j ó venes de manera intencional, frecuente y profunda. Como resultado, só lo una minorí a de j ó venes reportan ex perimentar competencias evolutivas fundamentales q ue han sido asociadas con una reducció n de comportamientos riesg osos y un aumento de conductas positivas. L a teorí a de las normas sociales sug iere q ue es má s probable q ue los adultos se involucren intensamente con j ó venes no familiares si ese involucramiento es visto como muy importante, y si perciben una ex pectativa social de q ue lo hag an. Una muestra representativa nacional de 1 4 2 5 adultos estadounidenses fue encuestada para determinar el g rado de importancia q ue le atribuí an a 1 9 acciones positivas de desarrollo de competencias, y el g rado en q ue adultos q ue ellos conocí an se involucraban en acciones de este tipo con j ó venes q ue no formaban parte de sus familias. L os resultados mostraron q ue só lo una minorí a de estadounidenses ex perimentaron motivació n normativa consistente para involucrarse con los hij os de otros. Hay una g ran brecha entre lo q ue los adultos consideran importante y lo q ue realmente hacen para construir relaciones positivas e intencionales con niñ os y j ó venes. L a estabilidad de la comunidad y el g rado en q ue los adultos se involucran con actividades de fortalecimiento de la comunidad, incluyendo participació n en ceremonias relig iosas, voluntariado y encuentros de vecindario, son asociados con diferencias en la motivació n de los adultos para involucrarse con j ó venes. S in embarg o, ademá s de estas diferencias de g rupo, hay tambié n nueve acciones de desarrollo de competencias -dos q ue funcionan como normas sociales g enuinas y siete como valores sociales-q ue una g ran mayorí a de estadounidenses consideran altamente importantes. P or lo tanto, ex isten en la opinió n pú blica los fundamentos para ex plicitar un mayor permiso para q ue los adultos se involucren má s profundamente en las vidas de menores q ue no forman parte de sus familias y así definir nuevas ex pectativas normativas para q ue todos los adultos compartan la responsabilidad por el bienestar de los j ó venes.

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Both common sense and social research indicate that y oung people need adults to b e involved with them, not j ust their own parents or other f amily memb ers, b ut adults in their neighb orhoods, their s c h o o l s , t h e s t o r e s t h e y f r e q u e n t , a n d t h e organizations they j oin. A sy nthesis of more than 8 0 0 research studies concluded that adult connection with and caring f or children and y outh is consistently associated with positive outcomes among y oung people. These outcomes include higher self -esteem, greater engagement with school and higher academic a c h i e v e me n t , l e s s e n e d d e l i n q u e n c y , l e s s e n e d sub stance ab use, b etter mental health, and b etter social skills ( Scales & Lef f ert,19 9 9 ) .
In this paper, we report on a national study of adults' relationships with children and y outh outside their own f amilies. The study ex amined how important adults think it is to engage positively with y oung people outside their own f amilies, and how much the adults around them have such relationships with children and adolescents ( detailed in Scales, Benson, & Roehlkepartain, 20 0 1; Scales,Benson,Roehlkepartain,et al.,20 0 2) . The study had two over-arching conclusions: ( a) large maj orities of Americans -7 0 % or more-rated 9 of 19 positive engagement b ehaviors " most important," b ut ( b ) rarely did these way s of relating to y oung people b ecome norms in their own social networks. That is, there was considerab le social value attrib uted to these b ehaviors, b ut little in the way of social ex pectation that adults will engage with y oung people in developmentally attentive way s.
Tab le 1 shows the large gaps our study f ound b etween what adults think they ought to do in relationship with y oung people, and what they actually do. It also shows that there were only two actions that were b oth considered highly important and done b y the maj ority of adults, that is, that f unctioned as social norms: Encourage children and y outh to take school seriously and do well in school, and ex pect children and y outh to respect adults as authority f igures.
Thus, the maj ority of the adult actions in relationships with children and y outh, despite b eing thought at least reasonab ly important b y large maj orities of Americans, actually f unction more as social values or personal pref erences than as social norms -that is, they were considered very important b y a maj ority , b ut only a minority lives those actions.

Tab le 1
Percentage point gap between importance of adult asset-building actions and adult engagement with young people those actions Importance Engagement Gap

S ocial V alues
Ex pect parents to set b oundaries 8 4% 42% 42% Teach shared values 8 0 % 45 % 3 5 % Teach respect f or cultural dif f erences 7 7 % 3 6 % 41% Guide decision making 7 6 % 41% 3 5 % There does not appear to be a great amount of social support or pressure to reflect these actions in daily living, although the values they represent receive wide agreement.
Some adults, however, are more likely to engage with young people. In the remainder of this paper, we consider how community stability and the degree to which adults engage in community-building activities such as volunteering, participating in meetings, and attending religious services, may affect the level of adults' attentiveness to young people's development.
The Role of Adults in Building Young

P eop le' s Dev elop menta l Assets
Through survey research with more than one million 6th-12th graders in more than 1,000 U.S. communities since the early 1990s, Search Institute has identified 40 developmental assets or building blocks of success that help young people be healthy, caring, responsible, and productive (Benson, 1997;Benson, Scales, Leffert, & Roehlkepartain, 1999). These 40 assets are not all that young people need in their lives, but the research foundation for their importance in promoting healthy development is comprehensive and compelling (Scales & Leffert, 1999). F or example, the more assets youth report in their lives, the less they engage in various kinds of high-risk behaviors (Leffert et al., 1998), and the more they show evidence of developmental thriving, such as doing well in school, valuing racial diversity, helping others, and overcoming adversity (Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). Although comparable data do not yet exist for children in Grades K-5, there is reason to believe that similar, age-appropriate relations would be found: The research clearly suggests that younger children require similar developmental experiences for positive growth (Leffert, Benson, & Roehlkepartain, 1997). F or most of the assets, whether young people experience them depends directly or indirectly on their relationships with adults. In the present study, we examined 19 positive adult actions that could build some of these developmental assets. ( 1 9 9 8 ) . Table 2 Relationship of developmental assets to adult asset-building actions studied

Asset Type
Asset Name and Definition explored in this study  * Because these asset-building actions emphasize informal, non-programmatic relationships outside of the family, they do not directly address the constructive-use-of-time assets, which focus on involvement in activities, programs, and organizations.
Shaded actions are those that at least 70% of respondents considered "most impotant" for adults to do (5 on a scale os 1-5).
** Parents being able to discipline their children, "without interference from others", was an action conceptualized as inconsistent with the theoretical and empirical framework of developmental asset building (Benson, 1997). An asset-building perspective calls for all adults to share in the responsibility for setting and enforcing a variety of rules and boundaries, and considers corporal punishment by any adult, including parents, to be generally both ineffective and inappropriate. Thus, this item was reverse-scored, with participants who gave it a "5" in importance receiving a "1" for a score.

Table 2
Continued understand what the norms or expectations are for them in their relationships with others' children?
All societies exhibit some degree of social norms that directly or indirectly guide people's behavior.
Indeed, Elster (1989) argued that there are two principal problems of social order, coordinating expectations and achieving cooperation, and that social norms are especially important for coordinating the expectations of society. Studies have demonstrated the powerful role that social norms play in regulating people's behavior across countless situations. These include the effect of norms on prejudice and discrimination (e.g., Jetten, Spears, & Manstead, 1996), the development of property rights (e.g., Young, 1998), aggression (e.g., Cohen, Vandello, Puente, & Rantilla, 1999), international standards of secrecy or transparency over military capabilities (e.g., Florini, 1996), and who gets to play pickup basketball (e.g., Jimerson, 1999).
Anthropologists also have argued that the main effect of norms is to "stabilize social expectations and thus establish commitments to particular ways of acting in common social situations" (Ensminger & Knight, 1997, p. 2). The unique feature of social norms is that deviations from social norms bring "sanctioning of deviant behavior" (p. 3). It is not simply the reaction of powerful others to enforce the norm that brings obedience, but, as Florini (1996)  only weakly related to a person's perception of identity, then personal sense of responsibility and engagement around that task also will be weak (Britt, 1999).
Norm activation theory (Schwartz, 1970)  indicators, such as divorce, community participation, and levels of trust or mistrust in government, measurements of Americans' well-being tend to show we are richer but unhappier than we were 30 years ago (Myers, 2000;Stille, 2000). The malleability of many social norms in contemporary society, their inconsistency over time and circumstances (Fukiyama, 1999), may have contributed to those trends.
Today, a majority of American adults perceive that giving advice to children or youth who are not their own will bring negative repercussions in the form of resentment and perhaps anger from the parents of those children or youth (Farkas & Johnson, 1997). The present study too suggests that many adults might give lip service to the African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child," but they do not feel the social permission and expectation more commonly experienced in a true village to actually help "raise" the next generation.
There may be a number of sources potentially giving "permission" for involvement with young people outside one's own family. "Good Samaritan" laws, for example, greater physical health, more joy, and less depression (Myers, 2000).
It is not unreasonable to suspect that people might well be more likely to overcome implicit norms that prevent Harry Cotug no, Gallup Org aniz ation, to P eter C. Sc ales, Searc h I nstitute, J uly 2 7 -2 8 , 2 0 0 0 ) . I ntentional oversampling and differential c ontac t and refusal rates produc ed a sample that in some respec ts differed from a representative sample of all adults ag es 1 8 and over in telephone households. T hus, Gallup applied weig hting proc edures to c orrec t results for distrib utional errors.
All results reported here are weig hted, and are not distorted b y a g roup' s representation in the sample that is different from that g roup' s distrib ution in the U.S. population of telephoneowning households.

S C AL E S , BE NS ON, R OE HL KE P AR T AI N, HI NT Z , S UL L I V AN Y M ANNE S
Attendance at religious services. Participants were asked: "About how often do you attend religious services?" Response choices ranged from 1 = daily to 6 = never. L ength of community residency. Participants were asked: "For how long have you lived in your current neighborhood?" Responses choices ranged from 1 = less than two years to 5 = 2 0 or more years.

Data Analysis
Several types of data analysis were conducted. First, we examined percentage responses to each item, for the whole sample and across demographic subgroups (i.e., by gender, parental status, etc.). To better understand the degree of personal and environmental motivation for these actions among American adults, we were especially interested in the intensity of participants' attitudes. Thus, we focused on the proportion that rated each asset-building norm a "5," or most important, and the proportion that said either almost all adults they knew (a response of "5") or a great majority of them ("4") actually did the action. We also examined differences in means, on both individual assetb u i l d i n g a c t i o n s , a n d t h e N o r m I m p o r t a n c e a n d N o r m Conformity scales.  and having lived in the community for at least ten years all are associated with significantly greater attribution of importance to adult asset-building actions with young people. They also were associated with adults being more embedded in social networks where relating to young people in these ways is the norm.

F req uenc y of Attendanc e at R eligious S erv ic es
Not surprisingly, freq uency of attendance at religious services makes a difference in how important adults rate the asset-building actions in relating to young people. However, on the average -that is, considering all the actions together-it makes somewhat less difference than might be expected.
Religious service attendance makes more of a  Table 4 shows that, on the Norm Importance scale, those who attended religious services weekly were more likely than those who never attended, attended monthly, or attended only once per year to rate these asset-building actions highly important.
But those weekly attendees were not more likely even than people who attended services every few m o n t h s t o r a t e t h e m s i g n i f i c a n t l y h i g h e r i n importance. On the Norm Conformity scale, both people who attended religious services weekly and those who attended only monthly were more likely than those who never attend, but not more likely than merely infrequent attendees, to say they are surrounded by adults who actually engage in these asset-building actions.
Apparently, frequent participation in religious services -at least weekly-has an association with both favorable attitudes toward adult asset-building actions and actual asset-building behavior. However, a lower level of participation -monthly-also is related to being in a network of adults who live these actions. It may be that monthly participation affords increased opportunities for interaction with young people and with other adults who are so engaged with kids, but

Frequency of Volunteering
Although less than half the sample thought it highly important to volunteer or donate money monthly to show young people the importance of giving, this finding could be an artifact of question wording. We asked about "monthly" volunteering or donating, and the frequency of such behavior may be considered less important than periodically serving or donating occasionally to charity as a model for young people.
Nevertheless, the monthly level of volunteerism itself did seem related to how important adults considered the asset-building actions to be. Table 4 shows that those who volunteered at least a few hours per month (as well as those who volunteered a few hours a week) were more likely than those who never volunteered to rate the actions more highly important on the Norm Importance scale. On the Norm Conformity scale, those monthly and weekly volunteers also were more likely to be surrounded by adults who do engage with children and youth in these various ways.
Volunteering can include both activities that are explicitly oriented to meeting basic needs of people (e.g., helping to feed and shelter the homeless) as well as activities that less directly have an immediate positive impact on human welfare (e.g., working on a political campaign). Perhaps it is more the former kind of volunteering that shares a quality in common with the values and beliefs that lead some adults to be quite involved with their religious congregation or to often participate in meetings that affect their immediate lives. Simply asking about "volunteering," as we did, may blur this distinction.

Participation in Neighborhood and Community
M eetings Table 4 shows that, on the Norm Importance scale, those who attended community meetings at least sometimes were more likely to rate the norms overall as highly important than were those who never attended such meetings, but not more likely than those who attended just rarely. However, on the Norm Conformity scale, those who participated often in neighborhood or community meetings were more likely than those who never or rarely participated to be surrounded by adults who live the actions. In addition, those who participated sometimes, or even rarely, were more likely than those who never participated to be in networks of adults who live the actions. Occasional participants might not be distinguished so readily from rare participants on their sense of how important the assetbuilding actions are, but those occasional participants seem to have more normative support or pressure in their own lives to live the actions. Unlike ratings of importance, however, still more frequent participation in neighborhood or community meetings -doing so often-does seem related to even greater embeddedness in a network of asset-building adults.
Examining results for each of the 19 individual actions suggests that the effect of community meeting participation may be even greater on behavior than it is on attitude. For example, those who attended meetings often were more likely than all other adults to be surrounded by adults who know many young people's names, F (3, 1409) = 10.01, p < .0001, have deeper

NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY IN BUILDING DEVELOPMENTAL ASSETS
conversations with them, F (3,1409) = 13.11, p < .0001, and give them chances to improve their communities, F (3,1409) =12.00, p < .0001. In addition, frequent attendees were more likely than those never attending to teach children to preserve their own cultural heritage, F (3, 1409) = 3.95, p < .008. Frequent attendees also were more likely either than rare or never attendees to feel a responsibility for all the neighborhood's children and youth, F (3, 1409) = 10.82, p < .0001, and to volunteer or give money monthly, F (3, 1409) = 9.61, p < .0001.
Occasional attendance, however, also was related to being in a network of adults who live some of these actions. For example, those who attended community meetings just sometimes were, along with those attended often, more likely than those who never attended community meetings, to discuss their values with kids, F (3, 1409) = 5.27, p < .001. Occasional attendees, along with frequent participants, also were more likely than those never attending to seek out young people's opinions, F (3, 1409) = 6.76, p < .0002.
Frequent attendance may not have much impact on favorable attitudes toward adult engagement with kids. However, it does seem related to greater social pressure overall for being involved with young people, and to specific asset-building actions, such as knowing neighborhood kids' names and feeling more responsible for the well-being of all children and youth in the neighborhood.
Because it may be that the same adults who often attend community meetings are the same adults who frequently volunteer and frequently attend religious services, we also conducted multiple analyses of variance on the Norm Importance and Conformity scales to examine the possible interaction among those

L ength of Neighborhood Residency
Adults were divided into those who had lived in their current neighborhoods for 10 or more years, 5-9 years, and less than 5 years. Table 4 shows that, on the Norm Importance scale, longer-term residents of 10 or more years were more likely than relative newcomers of less than 5 years residency to rate the asset-building actions overall as highly important.
A slightly different pattern emerged in looking at h o w l e n g t h o f c o m m u n i t y r e s i d e n c y a f f e c t s conformity to these asset-building actions. On the Norm Conformity scale, long-term residents were more likely than residents of 5-9 years, but not more likely than relative newcomers, to be surrounded by adults who live the actions. Length of residence clearly has an impact both on the likelihood that adults rate these actions highly important, and their reports of being surrounded by other adults who engage with kids.
Residents of 10 or more years appeared to experience more personal and environmental motivation to engage in these actions. In order to test for an interaction effect between age and y ears residing in th e commu nity , we condu cted mu l tip l e a n a l y s e s o f v a r i a n c e o n t h e No r m I m p o r t a n c e a n d Conformity scal es. Each y iel ded a significant ov eral l F ( Norm Imp ortance: F ( 1 4 , 1 3 4 6 ) = 1 . 6 9 , p < . 0 5 ; Norm Conformity : F ( 1 4 , 1 3 2 2 ) = 2 . 4 5 , p < . 0 0 2 ) , bu t onl y th e main effects for age and l ength of residency were significant.
In neith er case did th e interaction of age and residence p rodu ce a significant resu l t. T h u s, th e resu l ts rep orted h ere for residence are not confou nded by th e effects of age. is necessary to enable strangers to become neighbors . . ." (Saito, Sullivan, & Hintz, 2000, p. 28  W as hington, DC: Author.