title: Optimising measurement of health-related characteristics of the built environment: Comparing data collected by foot-based street audits, virtual street audits and routine secondary data sources.
abstract: The role of the neighbourhood environment in influencing health behaviours continues to be an important topic in public health research and policy. Foot-based street audits, virtual street audits and secondary data sources are widespread data collection methods used to objectively measure the built environment in environment-health association studies. We compared these three methods using data collected in a nationally representative epidemiological study in 17 British towns to inform future development of research tools. There was good agreement between foot-based and virtual audit tools. Foot based audits were superior for fine detail features. Secondary data sources measured very different aspects of the local environment that could be used to derive a range of environmental measures if validated properly. Future built environment research should design studies a priori using multiple approaches and varied data sources in order to best capture features that operate on different health behaviours at varying spatial scales.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. Electronic address: triantafyllos.pliakas@lshtm.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Triantafyllos
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pliakas
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hawkesworth
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Silverwood
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Kiran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nanchahal
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grundy
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Armstrong
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Population Health Sciences, University College London, UK.
authors.forename: Juan Pablo
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Casas
authors.affiliation: School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
authors.forename: Richard W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wilkinson
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lock
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D004779:Environment Design; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008330:Management Audit / Q000379:methods*; D011634:Public Health; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D012111:Residence Characteristics
keywords: Built environment; Environment measurement; Health; Research design