Silver, Daniel, Prentiss Dantzler, and Kofi Hope. 2023. “Residential Preferences, Place Alienation, and Neighbourhood Satisfaction: A Conjoint Survey Experiment in Toronto’s Inner Suburbs

Question 1

what method

Answer 1

conjoint survey experiment: survey-based statistical technique used in market research that helps determine how people value different attributes that make up an individual product or service.

Question 2

why is using abstracts and conducting this matter

Answer 2

i. B y understanding neighbourhood preferences, community groups, policymakers and planners may be able to adequately respond to community needs.
ii. However, rigorously studying such a dynamic and complex mix of subjective and objective processes is highly challenging.
It’s a multi-faceted research typic that can produce policy-relevant knowledge that affects quality of life (ex. eviction rates)

Question 3

research questions

Answer 3

“what attributes cause a neighborhood to be more or less desirable? What factors predict individuals’ degree of place alienation? To what extend does place alienation explain individuals’ satisfaction with their neighborhood?

Question 4

How does the research process sometimes rely on layers of different methodological approaches or other non-sociologists? Describe examples in the study by Professor Silver and his colleagues.

Answer 4

a. Example in this paper; defining neighborhoods
i. “The methodology for doing so it outline here [link to government documents]”
ii. Uses a table (table 2) for descriptive statistics for key study areas.
iii. Uses a table (table 1) for summarizing the complete set of profile attributes and attributes values in the survey
These were included based on “the neighborhood preferences literature along with consultation with a community advisory panel and focus groups of neighborhood residents” (read and gathered researchers, then did focus groups)

Question 5

place alienation

Answer 5

Defined by the proximity between a respondent’s perception of their actual neighborhood and the ideal neighborhood attributes revealed by the conjoint experiment.

Question 6

findings

Answer 6

a. They find that residents in lower SES neighborhoods share many of the same priorities as residents in higher SES neighborhoods like safety, transit, school quality, neighbourliness, public spaces, and building types.
b. However, SES-based differences appear across a range of preferences including bike usage, local commercial spaces, and cultural and recreation facilities.

Question 7

conjoint survey experiment

Answer 7

• Conjoint experiments are survey-based techniques that help determine the attributes people value an object or action
  
  • The procedure repeatedly presents study participants with pairs of profiles made up of different attributes and asks them to choose between the two profiles.
    ○ Attributes are randomly varied

Question 8

why is randommess in conjoint survey experiments important

Answer 8

This randomization is crucial; it means that respondents see unusual combinations of attributes, as well as common combinations, thereby allowing researchers to untangle the causal effect of attributes that typically co-occur (ex. safety and school quality)

Question 9

relationship found

Answer 9

c. They find a consistent, robust inverted relationship between place alienation and neighborhood satisfaction.
d. Moreover, this relationship is not mitigated by socioeconomic factors, neighborhood conditions, etc.
When considering place alienation and neighborhood satisfaction, they find a consistent, robust inverted relationship- meaning that as place alienation decreases, neighborhood satisfaction increases.