A Meta-Analysis of Influences on Social Control

This project will examine the multiple dimensions of social control. To do so, the research will undertake a meta-analysis of studies that have examined various influences on social control. The project will overcome limitations in the literature by assessing multiple outcomes and using meta-analysis rather than narrative reviews to assess the empirical validity and generalizability of context effects on social control.

This research will provide a state-of-the-art assessment of the literature across assorted influences of social control. Inattention to multiple dimensions of social control, including law enforcement, incarceration and sentencing, laws and policies, and informal social control, provides an inadequate and ad hoc test of the theoretical concept known as the minority threat perspective (MTP).

This gap is critical because it leaves in doubt the validity of the MTP, arguably the most prominent theoretical perspective used to explain the relationship between racial and ethnic context and social control. To overcome these limitations, the project will employ a meta-analysis by analyzing and synthesizing the more than 100 studies that have been published in the last four decades on the various effects on multiple dimensions of social control.

The project will thus assess the extent to which the MTP is empirically supported and is generalizable across different contexts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.