With an increasing interest in neighborhood-level data by city residents, in recent years research experts have been gathering metrics that explore perceptions of the neighborhoods of Boston.

Last month, the Boston Area Research Institution (BARI), which is housed at Northeastern University and partners with Harvard University and the city of Boston, released data from its Boston Neighborhood Survey, which was conducted by the Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study comprises three time frames – 2006, 2008, and 2010 – during which researchers asked residents directly, using random-digit dialing, what they thought about community norms and neighborhood resources, safety and relationships with police, and the well-being of neighborhood youth.
Although dozens of metrics were analyzed, BARI research director Dan O’Brien said two of the most important takeaways from the survey are perceptions of levels of social cohesion and social control.

“Social cohesion is the capacity of a group, in this case a neighborhood, to identify and accomplish shared goals,” O’Brien said. “Social control is to say, ‘This is what we want, and this is what we have to do to get it.’ Those are kind of two different things. Anyone who has dreamed a dream would know.”

Based on data from 2010, in Dorchester and Mattapan, social cohesion and social control gradually increase from north to south, with the exception of the area of “Columbia Point/Savin Hill,” as documented by BARI. In Fields Corner, for example, on a scale of 1 to 5, social cohesion was measured at 3.32 and social control at 3.18, while the area of “West Mattapan” had scores of 3.85 for social cohesion and 3.66 for social control.

These factors appear to remain relatively stable over time. For instance, in Dorchester’s “South Bay/Newmarket Square” area— as mapped by BARI— levels of social cohesion and social control changed little across the three ime periods. Social cohesion went from 3.26 in 2006 to 3.45 in 2010, and social control rose from 2.99 in 2006 to 3.26 in 2010.

O’Brien said that although the data may be somewhat outdated, research in other cities has shown that the metrics in question typically remain stable for 10 to 15 years.

“One of BARI’s big things has been trying to make as much data that is research-quality publicly available,” O’Brien said. “We’re finding ways to make data that can support research in a defensible way available.” He envisions community groups and people with “any level of data literacy” accessing the Boston Neighborhood Survey results.

In the past, researchers have accessed the data to assess youth health across Boston, among other indicators. The Survey metrics are visualized on the Boston Research Map, an interactive document that brings in all data contained in Harvard University’s Dataverse. With the map, users can compare data about neighborhood perceptions with information from municipal reports.

For example, perceived disorder and crime can be seen against incidents of public violence from 911 reports.

For residents who want to explore how perceptions of their neighborhood differ— or not— from reality, the flourishing data ecosystem O’Brien imagines might be key.

Colby King, an assistant professor of sociology at Bridgewater State University who lives in Dorchester, spoke about his own perceptions of the area before survey results were published.

“We encounter some of those same sorts of headwinds when we talk about where we live with folks who don’t know Dorchester, who haven’t lived here themselves,” King said. In Dorchester, he said, some places have “something that is actually pretty rare in US cities – diversity on the same block.”

He brought up the University of Virginia’s Racial Dot Map from 2013, which color-codes racial and ethnic demographics to shed light on residential segregation. He said that racial diversity is an important backdrop to consider in any sociological research. On the Boston Research Map, the most recent racial demographics are taken from the 2010 US Census.

One consistent theme that King noted was a general worry about gentrification, along with displacement as rents rise across the city. “I do think that there’s a sense of concern from inside the neighborhood, and interest from outside the neighborhood, about changes that are going on [and] the rising price of housing,” he said.

For his part, O’Brien said that the Boston Neighborhood Survey results may not be completely reflective of a changing city, saying that “Boston in 2017 has been going through some pretty dramatic experiences. I think that’s going to create some shakeups in some of the metrics, but I think they were relatively robust nonetheless,” he said.

The Injury Control Research Center has no concrete plans to perform a new survey. However, beginning in the fall, the UMass Boston is set to fill the gap. Data scientists there will partner with BARI to launch BEACON, a survey panel that will recruit residents from neighborhoods who will essentially act as liaisons between researchers and Bostonians.

Trent Buskirk, director of the Center for Survey Research and professor of management science and information systems at UMass Boston, sees BEACON becoming a place for residents to voice “their opinion, their perspective, their concern on a myriad of issues.” Buskirk said the team will measure perceptions of gentrification, social mobility, crime, police, and transportation, among other things.

Because the discussion will happen against the backdrop of scientific rigor, Buskirk hopes that outside agencies will be keen to use the data collected. “The other part of this,” he said, “is that basically, this is a resource for governments, education, and nonprofit entities. So we imagine that people from UMass Boston … may want to ask questions to the panel and so on. So the main idea is that the first panel will survey people in the fall and survey people in the spring, and then in the years after that, we want to get to quarterly surveys.”

For Buskirk, the most important part of his upcoming research will be the opportunity it affords not just to track changes in the city, but also to seek context for why those changes are happening from an individual perspective.

“In an era where costs are really important, people are leveraging big data for what it’s worth,” he said.

“The problem is that the big data itself cannot answer the why questions. We’re hoping that BEACON can shine a light on that.”