Research

Projects

Pathways logoThe Pathways to Prevention Project (includes Circles of Care and Linking to Learn)

The Pathways Project is an ongoing partnership between Mission Australia, and the Key Centre.  Planning began in 1999, so the project is one of the longest established activities of the Key Centre.

Pathways is based on the assumption that mobilising social resources to support children, families and their communities before problems emerge is more effective and cheaper than intervening when problems have become entrenched.  The key is to work early in the developmental pathways, which does not necessarily mean early in life.

The first phase of the project, carried out in the years 1999 to 2004, focussed on the transition to school in the most disadvantaged urban area of Queensland.  It involved the integration of family support programs with preschool and school-based programs in seven schools, delivered within a community development framework.

Further information:


Collective Efficacy and Violence in Australia

Chief Investigators: Professor Ross Homel, James McBroom, Dr Rebecca Wickes (University of Queensland), Professor Robert Sampson (Harvard University).  In association with Professor Lorraine Mazerolle.
In collaboration with international colleagues in Harvard University and from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Social Contexts of Pathways into Crime (SCoPiC) program, the project explored the role of collective efficacy in the community context, to examine how collective efficacy contributes to the spatial distribution of crime. The Australian research component explored the role of social ties and collective efficacy in explaining community variations in violence in Australia. Using data from 2,859 residents across 82 communities in the City of Brisbane, coupled with official reported crime data provided by the Queensland Police Service and Australian Bureau of Statistics census data for 2001, researchers employed multi-level statistical models to depict the relative importance of social ties and collective efficacy in predicting between neighbourhood levels of violence in an Australian context. Investigative models included in-depth measures of social relationships and community-based crime prevention programs and findings were contrasted with studies of collective efficacy in Chicago and Stockholm. The similarity in results suggests the generalizability of collective efficacy as an important community-level process that explains the spatial variation in levels of violence across urban communities, providing a valuable evidence base for future policy and the understanding of crime and violence.


The Healthy Neighbourhoods Project (2005-present)

This is a collaborative project being undertaken within a "Communities that Care" framework with researchers (Dr Joanne Williams and Assoc Professor John Toumbourou) from the Centre for Adolescent Health at Melbourne University. The project involves assessment of patterns of risk and protective factors predictive of adolescent well-being within 30 socioeconomically diverse communities across three states (Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia). It aims to examine the way the social context of neighbourhoods influences the health and behaviour of young people.


Griffith Research Online

This is a repository for published research material. The aim of the repository is to make important research available to the widest possible audience. Wherever possible, subject to author contributions and copyright constraints, it contains the full text of articles, conference papers, book chapters and other published written material


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