IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v71y2010i4p651-656.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rethinking measurement of neighborhood in the context of health research

Author

Listed:
  • Schaefer-McDaniel, Nicole
  • Dunn, James R.
  • Minian, Nadia
  • Katz, Danielle

Abstract

Systematic social observations have been gaining increasing recognition in neighborhood and health research as a way of measuring neighborhood attributes hypothesized to affect residents' well-being. Despite the growing popularity of this methodology, there has not been a critical discussion of potential shortcomings of this approach. This paper reviews some of the challenges and limitations in the systematic social observations methodology. We especially differentiate between limitations related to the methodology itself and challenges the approach presents for researchers in the field. We conclude by offering directions for future research utilizing this technique.

Suggested Citation

  • Schaefer-McDaniel, Nicole & Dunn, James R. & Minian, Nadia & Katz, Danielle, 2010. "Rethinking measurement of neighborhood in the context of health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 651-656, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:4:p:651-656
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(10)00412-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cohen, D. & Spear, S. & Scribner, R. & Kissinger, P. & Mason, K. & Wildgen, J., 2000. "'Broken windows' and the risk of gonorrhea," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 90(2), pages 230-236.
    2. Lofors, Jonas & Sundquist, Kristina, 2007. "Low-linking social capital as a predictor of mental disorders: A cohort study of 4.5 million Swedes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 21-34, January.
    3. Larsen, K. & Gilliland, J. & Hess, P. & Tucker, P. & Irwin, J. & He, M., 2009. "The influence of the physical environment and sociodemographic characteristics on children's mode of travel to and from school," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 99(3), pages 520-526.
    4. Macintyre, Sally & Ellaway, Anne & Cummins, Steven, 2002. "Place effects on health: how can we conceptualise, operationalise and measure them?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 125-139, July.
    5. Anthony, Elizabeth K. & Nicotera, Nicole, 2008. "Youth perceptions of neighborhood hassles and resources: A mixed method analysis," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 1246-1255, November.
    6. Veenstra, Gerry & Luginaah, Isaac & Wakefield, Sarah & Birch, Stephen & Eyles, John & Elliott, Susan, 2005. "Who you know, where you live: social capital, neighbourhood and health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2799-2818, June.
    7. Franzini, Luisa & Caughy, Margaret & Spears, William & Eugenia Fernandez Esquer, Maria, 2005. "Neighborhood economic conditions, social processes, and self-rated health in low-income neighborhoods in Texas: A multilevel latent variables model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(6), pages 1135-1150, September.
    8. Rojas, Yerko & Carlson, Per, 2006. "The stratification of social capital and its consequences for self-rated health in Taganrog, Russia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2732-2741, June.
    9. Schaefer-McDaniel, Nicole & O'Brien Caughy, Margaret & O'Campo, Patricia & Gearey, Wayne, 2010. "Examining methodological details of neighbourhood observations and the relationship to health: A literature review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 277-292, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mahmood, Atiya & Chaudhury, Habib & Michael, Yvonne L. & Campo, Michael & Hay, Kara & Sarte, Ann, 2012. "A photovoice documentation of the role of neighborhood physical and social environments in older adults’ physical activity in two metropolitan areas in North America," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(8), pages 1180-1192.
    2. Danan Gu & Haiyan Zhu & Ming Wen, 2015. "Neighborhood-health links: Differences between rural-to-urban migrants and natives in Shanghai," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 33(17), pages 499-524.
    3. Neutens, Tijs, 2015. "Accessibility, equity and health care: review and research directions for transport geographers," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 14-27.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chuang, Ying-Chih & Chuang, Kun-Yang, 2008. "Gender differences in relationships between social capital and individual smoking and drinking behavior in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(8), pages 1321-1330, October.
    2. McNeill, Lorna Haughton & Kreuter, Matthew W. & Subramanian, S.V., 2006. "Social Environment and Physical activity: A review of concepts and evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1011-1022, August.
    3. Stafford, Mai & Cummins, Steven & Ellaway, Anne & Sacker, Amanda & Wiggins, Richard D. & Macintyre, Sally, 2007. "Pathways to obesity: Identifying local, modifiable determinants of physical activity and diet," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(9), pages 1882-1897, November.
    4. Steffen Andreas Schüle & Gabriele Bolte, 2015. "Interactive and Independent Associations between the Socioeconomic and Objective Built Environment on the Neighbourhood Level and Individual Health: A Systematic Review of Multilevel Studies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-31, April.
    5. Cahuas, Madelaine C. & Wakefield, Sarah & Peng, Yun, 2015. "Social change or business as usual at city hall? Examining an urban municipal government's response to neighbourhood-level health inequities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 366-373.
    6. O'Brien, Daniel T. & Farrell, Chelsea & Welsh, Brandon C., 2019. "Broken (windows) theory: A meta-analysis of the evidence for the pathways from neighborhood disorder to resident health outcomes and behaviors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 272-292.
    7. Giatti, Luana & Barreto, Sandhi M. & César, Cibele C., 2010. "Unemployment and self-rated health: Neighborhood influence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 815-823, August.
    8. Schaefer-McDaniel, Nicole & O'Brien Caughy, Margaret & O'Campo, Patricia & Gearey, Wayne, 2010. "Examining methodological details of neighbourhood observations and the relationship to health: A literature review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 277-292, January.
    9. Atuoye, Kilian Nasung & Luginaah, Isaac, 2017. "Food as a social determinant of mental health among household heads in the Upper West Region of Ghana," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 170-180.
    10. Philip Q. Yang & Shann Hwa Hwang, 2016. "Explaining Immigrant Health Service Utilization," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(2), pages 21582440166, May.
    11. Motoc, Irina & Hoogendijk, Emiel O. & Timmermans, Erik J. & Deeg, Dorly & Penninx, Brenda W.J.H. & Huisman, Martijn, 2023. "Social and physical neighbourhood characteristics and 10-year incidence of depression and anxiety in older adults: Results from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    12. Snelgrove, John W. & Pikhart, Hynek & Stafford, Mai, 2009. "A multilevel analysis of social capital and self-rated health: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 1993-2001, June.
    13. Peter Congdon, 2010. "A multiple indicator, multiple cause method for representing social capital with an application to psychological distress," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-23, March.
    14. Zhenduo Liu & Hui Sun & Jian Zhang & Jingfei Yan, 2023. "Status, Hotspots, and Future Trends: Bibliometric Analysis of Research on the Impact of the Built Environment on Children and Adolescents’ Physical Activity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-17, January.
    15. Weden, Margaret M. & Carpiano, Richard M. & Robert, Stephanie A., 2008. "Subjective and objective neighborhood characteristics and adult health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(6), pages 1256-1270, March.
    16. Choi, Jin Young, 2009. "Contextual effects on health care access among immigrants: Lessons from three ethnic communities in Hawaii," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1261-1271, October.
    17. Shen, Yuying, 2014. "Community building and mental health in mid-life and older life: Evidence from China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 209-216.
    18. Franzini, Luisa, 2008. "Self-rated health and trust in low-income Mexican-origin individuals in Texas," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(12), pages 1959-1969, December.
    19. David Consolazio & Annemarie Koster & Simone Sarti & Miranda T Schram & Coen D A Stehouwer & Erik J Timmermans & Anke Wesselius & Hans Bosma, 2020. "Neighbourhood property value and type 2 diabetes mellitus in the Maastricht study: A multilevel study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-13, June.
    20. Zwerts, Enid & Allaert, Georges & Janssens, Davy & Wets, Geert & Witlox, Frank, 2010. "How children view their travel behaviour: a case study from Flanders (Belgium)," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 702-710.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:4:p:651-656. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.