Exploring the Relationship between School Environmental Characteristics and Youth’s Self-Regulation

Schools are essential to supporting youth in learning the foundational knowledge needed to contribute their unique perspectives and skills to society. Youth spend much of their time outside of the home in and around the schools that they attend. These neighborhoods, particularly those that are under-resourced and urban, present a distinct ecology where school environmental characteristics may be particularly important for youth development. School environmental characteristics measured in this study include indicators of physical decay, physical disorder, safety features, and aesthetic quality of the school itself and the neighborhood that surrounds it. I used Google Street View in conjunction with an observational data collection tool, the Internet- based School Neighborhood Assessment Protocol (ISNAP; McCoy et. al., 2019) to characterize the environmental characteristics of the high schools and their neighborhoods attended by a sample of 280 adolescents living and attending school in predominantly under-resourced Chicago neighborhoods. I then estimated relationships between school environmental characteristics, school climate, school neighborhood environmental characteristics and youth’s self-regulatory skills. Contrary to hypotheses, I failed to find relationships between either school environmental characteristics or school climate and youth’s self-regulation. However, I did find that school neighborhood characteristics, specifically indicators of safety and health and wellness, were protective for youth’s self-regulation outcomes.