Citation

Howell NA, Farber S, Widener MJ, Allen J, Booth GL. Health Place 2018; 54: 149-154.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.healthplace.2018.08.009

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Studies employing 'activity space' measures of the built environment do not always account for how individuals self-select into different residential and non-residential environments when testing associations with physical activity. To date, no study has examined whether preferences for walkable residential neighborhoods predict exposure to other walkable neighborhoods in non-residential activity spaces. Using a sample of 9783 university students from Toronto, Canada, we assessed how self-reported preferences for a walkable neighborhood predicted their exposure to other walkable, non-residential environments, and further whether these preferences confounded observed walkability-physical activity associations. We found that residential walkability preferences and non-residential walkability were significant associated (β = 0.42, 95% CI: (0.37, 0.47)), and further that these preferences confounded associations between non-residential walkability exposure and time spent walking (reduction in association = 10.5%). These results suggest that self-selection factors affect studies of non-residential built environment exposures.

Language: en

Keywords

Activity space; Non-residential environment; Physical activity; Self-selection; Walkability; Young adult