| Citation/location | | • Surname of first author and year of publication; country where study undertaken. | | Studies reporting data for both SRH and CVD risk factors indicated by asterisks. |
| Health indicator/analytic variable | | • Self rated health: How would you describe your overall state of health: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?• Risk factors for CVD: physical activity, diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index, overweight and obesity, diabetes, hypertension.• Mortality: all cause and cause specific mortality where individual level data available.• Analytic variable: treatment of the outcome variable was treated. | | BMI, body mass index; CVD, cardiovascular disease; CHD: coronary heart disease; HBP, high blood pressure; N’hood, neighbourhood; PA, physical activity.Analytical variables: dichotomous/binomial, 0/1; ordinal/ordered categorical, ord; continuous, cont. |
| Design/year of data collection (individual level) | | • Cross sectional, longitudinal (follow up), or case–control research design.• Year of data collection at the individual level. | | |
| Sample size individuals (sex/age range) | | • Sample size of individual data (full dataset) and sex distribution and age in years (y) range of the sample. | | y, year |
| NR, not reported |
| Individual characteristics adjusted for | | • Individual level characteristics adjusted for in multilevel models. | | A, age; E, education; ES, employment status (eg, employed, unemployed, retired); I, income; MS, marital status; N’hood, neighbourhood; OS, occupational status (type of work, eg blue collar, professional); PA, physical activity; R/E, race/ethnicity; S, sex; SC, social class; SES, socioeconomic status; SN, social network/support. All other characteristics are nominally identified. |
| Sample size of areas | | • Sample size and operational definition of areas | | |
| Area level exposures | | • Area level exposure and type—ie, whether they are derived/aggregated from individual level data (eg, census data), or integral—ie, only measurable at the area level (eg, number of parks). | | d, Derived variable |
| i, Integral variable |
| N’hood, neighbourhood |
| Crude between-area variation | | • Significant between-area variation unadjusted for individual level characteristics unless otherwise specified.• Reported by variance component and standard error, intraclass correlation coefficient for continuous and dichotomous outcomes, and plausible value range; all others are nominally identified. | | ICC, intraclass correlation coefficient; p, p value; SE, standard error; PP, predicted probability; PVR, plausible value range; VC, variance component; NR, not reported; Sign, significant; NS, not significant; SNR, significance not reported. |
| | (Note: variance component is significant when >1.96 * SE). | | |
| Adjusted between-area variation | | • Significant between-area variation adjusted for individual level characteristics unless otherwise specified. | | Same as above |
| | Same as above | | |
| Significant adjusted area effects | | • Significant area effects on health in models adjusting for individual and area level variables (final models) unless otherwise specified.• Cross level interaction: differential area effects across subgroup of individuals. In some cases, authors reported the association of an individual effect on a health indicator in a subset of areas. This was also considered to be a cross level interaction.• Area level interaction: differential effect of an area exposure on a health outcome conditional on another area exposure. | | |