What are Social Indicators?

As stated earlier, community-level risk and protective factors refer to social indicators that are associated with increases or decreases in substance use problems within the community. In relation to substance abuse prevention, social indicators include statistical data on such topics as the rates of unemployment, people receiving social services, people in treatment, children living in foster care, homicide, alcohol-related arrests, drug-related arrests, and property crimes. Examining social indicators provides a basis for analyzing risk and protective factors within a region.

For example, if your neighborhood has high rates of alcohol-related arrests and alcohol-related traffic fatalities, as well as a high number of retail alcohol outlets, your neighborhood scores high on the risk factor “availability of alcohol.”

However, in this example, obtaining the rates of alcohol-related arrests, alcohol-related traffic fatalities, and the number of retail alcohol outlets in relation to the number of residents (called “retail outlet density”) may involve working with multiple State or local Government agencies. Each State and regional Government collects and provides social indicator data differently. In many States, social indicator information must be obtained through multiple agencies and the information can be inconsistent. In only a few States, social indicator data is easily available from a single source.