"There Goes the Neighborhood": Nonresident Perceptions of Neighborhood Disorder

Perceptions of neighborhood disorder have been studied by researchers in many ways since social disorganization theory was first introduced in the 1930s. However, few studies have focused explicitly on nonresident perceptions of neighborhood disorder. Further still, investigations regarding how race/ethnicity and gender may influence this population’s responses are also lacking in the present literature. This study intends to close some of the gap in this area of research.This study uses qualitative analysis to focus on Hispanic and Caucasian nonresidents’ responses to a single photographic stimulus. This study focuses on the following: (1) perception of neighborhood disorder, (2) gender-specific neighborhood perceptions of disorder, (3) inclusion of race-identifying words, specifically in terms of frequency among Hispanic respondents, and (4) prevalence of negative adjective use. Previous research has discovered that nonresidents have associated race with neighborhood disorder despite the absence of people in the surveying/data collection methods. By further investigating this topic, this research aims to analyze the responses more closely regarding the response affect (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) with negative adjectives and race-identifying words. The findings from this study may encourage future investigation into implicit and explicit biases focused on the possible unconscious connection of race/ethnicity and neighborhood disorder in individual perceptions.