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