The Boston Special Youth Project Affiliation Dataset

The Boston Special Youth Project (SYP) Affiliation dataset is a large, bipartite network representing interactions among 166 gang members from seven gangs for nearly three years. The project was conducted from June 1954 to May 1957 and represents one of the most elaborate gang intervention programs ever conducted. The SYP was a “detached-worker program,” where an adult (typically a graduate student from one of the surrounding universities) was assigned to an area (local parks, housing projects) to establish and maintain contact with and attempt to change the behaviors of the gangs. These workers collected detailed field notes (“contact cards”) documenting the activities of study gang members. However, the social network data collected on the contact cards were never analyzed by SYP staff. After the death of the project leader, Walter Miller, in 2004, the materials from the project became available to a team of researchers (faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students) in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. These researchers electronically scanned and digitized the contact cards, and began the process of creating a network from the cards. From these cards, a bipartite network was created where 166 individuals (i.e. gang members) were connected to 33,653 events (i.e. contact cards).