title: What is my walking neighbourhood? A pilot study of English adults' definitions of their local walking neighbourhoods.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Existing 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.
  
  
  METHODS
  We 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.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When 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%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We 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.
authors.affiliation: British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. charlie.foster@dphpc.ox.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gidlow
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Davey
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Foster
references.citation: Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2007 Dec 18;4:66
references.pmid: 18088416
references.citation: J Epidemiol Community Health. 2004 Nov;58(11):924-8
references.pmid: 15483308
references.citation: Am J Public Health. 2003 Sep;93(9):1552-8
references.pmid: 12948979
references.citation: Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2006 Sep;38(9):1682-91
references.pmid: 16960531
references.citation: Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2008 May 30;5:32
references.pmid: 18513430
references.citation: Prev Med. 2006 Jun;42(6):455-9
references.pmid: 16574208
references.citation: J Urban Health. 2007 May;84(3):346-59
references.pmid: 17401691
references.citation: Am J Prev Med. 2003 May;24(4):323-31
references.pmid: 12726870
references.citation: Soc Sci Med. 2009 Nov;69(9):1306-10
references.pmid: 19692161
references.citation: Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2009 Jul 06;6:39
references.pmid: 19580645
references.citation: Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 Feb;6(2):654-77
references.pmid: 19440408
references.citation: Prev Chronic Dis. 2004 Oct;1(4):A20
references.pmid: 15670452
references.citation: Prev Med. 2008 Sep;47(3):294-8
references.pmid: 18544463
references.citation: J Phys Act Health. 2009;6 Suppl 1:S70-80
references.pmid: 19998852
references.citation: J Phys Act Health. 2006 Feb;3(s1):S99-S117
references.pmid: 28834523
references.citation: Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2009 Oct 15;6:70
references.pmid: 19832969
references.citation: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2005 Jan 25;(1):CD003180
references.pmid: 15674903
references.citation: Am J Prev Med. 2005 Feb;28(2 Suppl 2):169-76
references.pmid: 15694525
references.citation: Am J Prev Med. 2004 Jul;27(1):67-76
references.pmid: 15212778
references.citation: BMJ. 2007 Jun 9;334(7605):1204
references.pmid: 17540909
references.citation: Am J Prev Med. 2005 Feb;28(2 Suppl 2):105-16
references.pmid: 15694518
references.citation: J Epidemiol Community Health. 2008 Aug;62(8):689-94
references.pmid: 18621953