Adolescents' sense of community and feeling of unsafety in the urban environment

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore adolescents' feeling of unsafely associated with living in the urban context, their perceptions of the quality of social relations (social support from different persons) and sense of community, and the differences according to the size of the city and adolescent gender. A second aim was to analyse the antecedents of feeling of unsafely. In particular, we considered the influence of sense of community, perception of social support and personal involvement in negative experiences in the urban environment. A questionnaire was submitted to 823 adolescents aged 14 to 19 years (43.3% male and 56.7% female), living in cities of different sizes in north-central Italy. Results show the presence of differences in feeling of unsafely and sense of community according to the size of the urban context and adolescent gender. Personal involvement in negative situations is a strong predictor of feeling of unsafely, whereas sense of community plays a limited role in reducing it. The picture concerning the effect of social support is mixed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.