Conceptualization and measurement of environmental exposure in epidemiology: Accounting for activity space related to daily mobility
Highlights
► Administrative units might not be the best way to delimit environmental exposures. ► The activity space may be more relevant because it accounts for space–time behavior. ► Few studies have theorized how activity spaces may capture contextual exposures. ► We explore how various disciplines may enrich the concept of activity space.
Introduction
A considerable body of literature in social science and population health research has investigated the field of contextual effects over the past two decades. Despite ongoing discussions on the best way to define geographic context (Bernard et al., 2007; Cummins et al., 2007; Daniel et al., 2008; Macintyre et al., 2002), ecologic and multilevel analysis have generally adopted a common approach based on the notion of “neighborhood”. Most studies focus on the residential neighborhood and used local administrative units, such as census tracts, as spatial delimitations (Diez Roux, 2001). Such choices are primarily based on the availability of routine administrative data rather than on the theoretical underpinnings concerning the appropriate spatial scale at which environmental exposures are meant to affect individuals. Census tracts, block groups, or postal units provide a readily usable spatial delimitation for the assessment of social or built characteristics of local areas. Nevertheless, administrative units are probably ill-suited to represent the appropriate space to evaluate environmental effects on health, as they generally do not represent the potentially accessible environment of an individual nor the true experienced exposure (Lee et al., 2008). Prior research on environment-health relationships has observed a relatively marginal effect of neighborhood factors (Adams et al., 2009, Diez Roux, 2001, Oakes, 2004, Pickett and Pearl, 2001). However, a misspecification of contextual boundaries could explain the weakness of such observed associations (Spielman and Yoo, 2009). Until now, social and spatial epidemiology have not fully integrated individual space–time behavior, even if fixed residential spatial units may not be the most relevant way to account for environnemental exposure in epidemiologic research.
By reviewing the concept of space and mobility in the fields of epidemiology, geography, transportation research, and environmental psychology, the present article aims to help refine the conceptual and operational elements for environmental exposure assessment in epidemiological research. First, we question the relevance of routinely using administrative units. Second, the role of mobility is explored in relation to the current focus on residential exposure in aetiological studies. Given the transdisciplinary nature of research on mobility and exposure, the present article performs a scoping review in various disciplines in order to explore how notions of mobility and activity spaces may contribute to a refinement of contextual exposures in health research.
Section snippets
Residential neighborhoods as fixed spatial units
Several literature reviews (Chaix, 2009, Cummins et al., 2007, Leal and Chaix, 2010, Riva et al., 2007, Schaefer-McDaniel et al., 2010a) have questioned the legitimacy of using fixed spatial units such as census tracts, census block groups, postal codes, voting precincts or administrative unit clusters as geographic boundaries to investigate social and physical influences. Relationships between neighborhood residential environments and various health behaviours and outcomes have traditionally
A brief definition of activity space
The notion of “activity space”, originally rooted in social sciences, has been defined as “the subset of all locations within which an individual has direct contact as a result of his or her day-to-day activities” (Golledge and Stimson, 1997, p. 279). The activity space, in reflecting daily mobility, is an individual measure of spatial behavior (Sherman et al., 2005a). Accordingly, the present paper focuses on daily mobility without losing sight of the fact that daily mobility is strongly
Conclusion
In this paper, we have investigated how notions of mobility and activity space can improve our capacity to integrate space in the measurement of exposure to environmental factors. Our assessment of the literature covered four disciplines in which notions of activity space were used.
It appears that time geography and transportation research offer interesting theoretical and analytical frameworks to investigate individual mobility in space and time, with related notions of daily activities and
References (102)
- et al.
A study of community design, greenness, and physical activity in children using satellite, GPS and accelerometer data
Health & Place
(2012) - et al.
A GIS toolkit for exploring geographies of household activity/travel behavior
Journal of Transport Geography
(2006) - et al.
Health inequalities and place: a theoretical conception of neighbourhood
Soc Sci Med
(2007) Contributions of journeys away to the definition of home: an empirical study of a dialectical process
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(1996)- et al.
An interactive mapping tool to assess individual mobility patterns in neighborhood studies
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
(2012) - et al.
Neighbourhoods in eco-epidemiologic research: delimiting personal exposure areas. A response to Riva, Gauvin, Apparicio and Brodeur
Social Science & Medicine
(2009) - et al.
Understanding and representing ‘place’ in health research: a relational approach
Social Science & Medicine
(2007) - et al.
Framing the biosocial pathways underlying associations between place and cardiometabolic disease
Health & Place
(2008) Neighborhoods and health: where are we and were do we go from here?
Revue d Epidemiologie et de Sante Publique (Paris)
(2007)- et al.
Moving from trip-based to activity-based measures of accessibility
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
(2006)
Home versus nonhome neighborhood: quantifying differences in exposure to the built environment
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Non-residential neighborhood exposures suppress neighborhood effects on self-rated health
Social Science and Medicine
Using experienced activity spaces to measure foodscape exposure
Health Place
Place effects on health: how can we conceptualise, operationalise and measure them?
Soc. Sci. Med.
Distance and health care utilization among the rural elderly
Social Science & Medicine
he (mis)estimation of neighborhood effects: causal inference for a practicable social epidemiology
Social Science & Medicine
Gaining children's perspectives: a multiple method approach to explore environmental influences on healthy eating and physical activity
Health & Place
Place-identity: physical world socialization of the self
Journal of Environmental Psychology
Conceptualizing the healthscape: contributions of time geography, location technologies and spatial ecology to place and health research
Social Science & Medicine
Out and about: association of the built environment with physical activity behaviors of adolescent females
Health & Place
Examining methodological details of neighbourhood observations and the relationship to health: a literature review
Social Science and Medicine
Rethinking measurement of neighborhood in the context of health research
Social Science and Medicine
The spatial dimensions of neighborhood effects
Social Science and Medicine
The built environment and location-based physical activity
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Place and identity processes
Journal of Environmental Psychology
The combined effects of activity space and neighbourhood of residence on participation in preventive health-care activities: the case of cervical screening in the Paris metropolitan area (France)
Health Place
The role of daily mobility in mental health inequalities: the interactive influence of activity space and neighbourhood of residence on depression
Social Science & Medicine
Effects of area deprivation on health risks and outcomes: a multilevel, cross-sectional, Australian population study
International Journal of Public Health
Spatial regression
Observing the rhythms of daily life: a six-week travel diary
Transportation
Integration of an activity-based model system and a residential location model
Urban Studies
Association of the built environment with physical activity and obesity in older persons
American Journal of Public Health
Ethnic segregation and residential mobility: relocations of minority ethnic groups in the Netherlands
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
The social dimension in action: a multilevel, personal networks model of social activity frequency between individuals
Transportation Research: Part A: Policy and Practice
How far and with whom do people socialize? Empirical evidence about the distance between social network members
Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Geographic life environments and coronary heart disease: a literature review, theoretical contributions, methodological updates, and a research agenda
Annual Review of Public Health
Comparison of a spatial perspective with the multilevel analytical approach in neighborhood studies: the case of mental and behavioral disorders due to psychoactive substance use in Malmo, Sweden, 2001
American Journal of Epidemiology
Mapping residents’ perceptions of neighborhood boundaries: a methodological note
American Journal of Community Psychology
Commentary: investigating neighbourhood effects on health—avoiding the ‘local trap’
International Journal of Epidemiology
Networks and geography: modelling community network structures as the outcome of both spatial and network processes
Social Networks
Investigating neighborhood and area effects on health
American Journal of Public Health
Next steps in understanding the multilevel determinants of health
Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health
Neighborhoods and health
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Neighborhood models and measures
Reintroducing attitude theory in travel behavior research
Transportation
Spatial Behavior
Territorial belonging
Cited by (246)
Impact of native-plants policy scenarios on premature mortality in Denver: A quantitative health impact assessment
2023, Environment InternationalA quasi-experimental study on the impact of park accessibility on the mental health of undergraduate students
2023, Urban Forestry and Urban GreeningGendered mobility and activity pattern: implications for gendered mental health
2023, Journal of Transport Geography
- 1
Tel.: +514 890 8000x15900.