1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«This article examines the importance of collective efficacy in three separate urban environments: Toronto, Montreal, and Philadelphia, and its relation to the use of illegal substances among students.» (p. 13)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
The sample contains 2519 students between «[…] 9th- to 12th-graders from Toronto (8 schools; n=983 students), Philadelphia (7 schools; n=712), and Montreal (8 schools; n=824) sampled from 23 schools between April 2001 and May 2003.» (p. 14)

Instruments :
Questionnaires

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«Employing a large-scale, stratified sample of high school students, we found that adolescents in Montreal consistently report higher rates of alcohol and cannabis use than those in Toronto or Philadelphia. These differences remain prominent after controlling for compositional effects, with students from Philadelphia being much less likely to report alcohol and cannabis use. […] We found that neighborhood closure was significant in all four of the substance use outcomes measured. This finding was significant in Montreal, Toronto, and Philadelphia, and lends support to the idea that a strong sense of community is important for understanding adolescent substance use. As this measure captures the adolescent’s sense that parents and other adults in his/her neighborhood are paying attention both to each other and to what the local children are doing, this suggests a monitoring or informal social control function that is protective of adolescent substance use. Youth who engage in substance use may also feel less watched by parents and other adults in the neighborhood. […] Parental closure, another aspect of collective efficacy, was not significant. It may be again that these are low visibility behaviors kept from parents and other adults. Alternatively, they may be normative behaviors among students and reflective of the separation of generations on alcohol and cannabis use.» (p. 18-19)