What is my walking neighbourhood? A pilot study of English adults' definitions of their local walking neighbourhoods

Graham Smith,Christopher Gidlow,Charles Foster,Rachel Davey

doi:10.1186/1479-5868-7-34

Abstract

BackgroundExisting measures of perceptions of the environment associated with walking commonly rely on providing a definition of 'neighbourhood', e.g. 1 mile area around the home. We have little understanding of how these examples relate with adults' own geographical definitions of their neighbourhood area. Our pilot study examined the congruence between definitions used in environmental questionnaires and adults' own definitions of neighbourhood.MethodsWe conducted 58 face-to-face interviews with participants randomly selected from 10 areas of Stoke-on-Trent, England. Participants were shown printed maps showing their local area with road names and places of interest (e.g. shops, services, green space) and were asked: (i) to recall usual walking destinations (from their home); (ii) to draw their 'neighbourhood walking area' on the map. Annotated maps were scanned back into GIS for analysis.ResultsWhen asked to draw their 'neighbourhood' boundary, the resulting area drawn by participants on average represented only 16 ± 20% of the commonly used total straight-line buffer of 1 mile (or 1.6 km) with a range of 0.3% to 111%. Even when repeated using a network buffer (rather than straight-line) the same comparison resulted in a mean of 36% (± 47%) and a range of 0.6 to 245%.ConclusionsWe found that adults' interpretation of their neighbourhood area does not appear to relate accurately to the definitions typically used in research into environmental perceptions and walking. This mis-match warrants further investigation as definitions used in existing measures may be consistently misclassifying perceived local walking neighbourhoods.

Highlights

Policy makers are increasingly recognising that creating environments to encourage healthy behaviours and discourage unhealthy behaviours may help to reduce health inequalities [1]
Growth in environmental studies examining the socioecological correlates of physical activity reflects policy makers' desire to create environments that enable people to build physical activity into their daily lives [2,6]
When participants were asked to draw their 'neighbourhood' boundary, the resulting areas were smaller than those calculated using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based on standard neighbourhood definitions (1 mile or 1 km around the home)

Summary

Introduction

Policy makers are increasingly recognising that creating environments to encourage healthy behaviours and discourage unhealthy behaviours may help to reduce health inequalities [1]. This recognition has seen the introduction of legislative and environmental interventions to shape choices across a number of delivery sectors including transport, education and urban planning [2]. The negative impact of the built environment has been seen as a contributing factor to non-communicable disease, including cardio-vascular disease, cancer and obesity [1,3,4] This impact has focused research to examine the relationship between the environment and different risk. Our pilot study examined the congruence between definitions used in environmental questionnaires and adults' own definitions of neighbourhood

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion