OBJECTIVES: Within the socio-ecologic framework, diet and physical activity are influenced
by individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and public policy factors.
A basic principle underlying this framework is that environments can influence an
individual's behavior. However, in the vast majority of cross-sectional and even the
few longitudinal studies of this relationship, the question of whether individuals
select their area of residence based on physical activity-related amenities is ignored.
In this paper, we address a critical methodological issue: self-selection of residential
location, which is generally not accounted for, and can significantly compromise research
on the relationship between environmental factors and physical activity behaviors.
METHOD: We define and discuss the problem of residential self-selection in the study
of neighborhood influences on health and health behavior, review methods used to control
for residential self-selection in the literature, and present our strategy for addressing
this potentially important source of bias. CONCLUSION: Existing research has built
our understanding of residential self-selection bias, but important gaps remain. Our
strategy uses data from a longitudinal cohort study linked to contemporaneous environmental
measures to create a multi-equation model system to simultaneously estimate residential
choice, environmental influences on physical activity, and downstream health outcomes
such as obesity and clinical cardiovascular disease risk factor measures.