The following five items probed each individual's perception of the social cohesion in their neighborhood: (1) this is a close-knit or unified community, (2) people around here are willing to help their neighbors, (3) people in this neighborhood generally do not get along with each other (reverse coded), (4) people in this neighborhood do not share the same values (reverse coded) and (5) people in this neighborhood can be trusted. Respondents could agree or disagree with these statements in varying degrees (1=strongly agree through 4=strongly disagree). Responses to the items were then summed to create a score that could range from 0 to 16. Each of these sum scores were then averaged by neighborhood to create a neighborhood-wide measure of social cohesion. Higher scores indicate a greater level of average neighborhood social cohesion.41 Note that neighborhoods were defined by geocoding DNHS subjects based on census tracts.28 Neighborhood-level perceptions of social cohesion were calculated by aggregating the mean social cohesion scores for all individuals residing in each neighborhood. Participant addresses were geocoded to block groups, which in turn were aggregated to
