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      Residential moves, neighbourhood walkability, and physical activity: a longitudinal pilot study in Ontario Canada

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          Abstract

          Background

          Numerous cross-sectional studies have consistently demonstrated an association between attributes of urban form or ‘walkability’ and individual- and population-level physical activity (PA) patterns. However, in the absence of longitudinal research, the self-selection problem undermines the claim that a walkable built form produces more physically active people. Through a longitudinal pilot study of ‘imminent movers’ in Ontario using a quasi-experimental approach, we sought to examine the feasibility of longitudinal methods that would produce stronger evidence for a causal relationship between the built environment and PA levels.

          Methods

          Participants were recruited using publicly available real estate listings. Successful recruits were sent a PA diary to track their activity for a week, and were also scheduled for a 45-min phone interview that collected demographic details, neighbourhood perceptions and self-efficacy for walking, and verified the PA diary. Following their move, participants were given the same tasks and then sorted into groups based on changes in their neighbourhood walkability (measured with Walk Score) from baseline to follow-up.

          Results

          There were challenges in recruiting a sufficient number of participants and counter-factuals to examine the relationship between changes in walkability and PA. Our limited sample showed a substantial decrease in Walk Score over the entire sample, from an average of 45.8 to 30.6, with most participants moving to less walkable areas. From baseline to follow-up, the largest declines in reported self-efficacy for walking were to grocery stores, banks, and for entertainment. For the entire sample, utilitarian PA decreased, while recreational and job-related PA increased.

          Conclusions

          This pilot study highlighted the methodological challenges involved in collecting quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of walkable environments on PA. Additionally, the low sample size and the tendency for most participants to move to less walkable areas meant there were insufficient counter-factuals for study of the effect of walkability on PA. Despite these challenges, we saw important changes in self-efficacy for walking that were commensurate with changes to the built environment. In sum, while longitudinal research on health and the built environment is urgently needed, recruiting an adequate sample size for a quasi-experimental study such as this is extremely challenging.

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          Most cited references25

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          Perceived and objective environmental measures and physical activity among urban adults.

          Enhancing community environments to support walking and bicycling serves as a promising approach to increase population levels of physical activity. However, few studies have simultaneously assessed perceptions and objectively measured environmental factors and their relative association with transportation or recreational physical activity. For this cross-sectional study, high- and low-income study areas were selected among census tracts in St. Louis MO ("low-walkable" city) and Savannah GA ("high-walkable" city). Between February and June 2002, a telephone survey of 1068 adults provided measures of the perceived environment and physical activity behavior. In this timeframe, objective measures were collected through environmental audits of all street segments (n =1158). These measures were summarized using 400-m buffers surrounding each respondent. Neighborhood characteristics included the land use environment, transportation environment, recreational facilities, aesthetics, and social environment. Associations were examined between neighborhood features and transportation- and recreation-based activity. After adjusting for age, gender, and education, transportation activity was negatively associated with objective measures of sidewalk levelness and perceived and objective neighborhood aesthetics. It was positively associated with perceived and objectively measured number of destinations and public transit, perceived access to bike lanes, and objective counts of active people in the neighborhood. Recreational activity was positively associated with perceived access to recreational facilities and objective measures of attractive features. These findings indicate that physical activities for transportation or recreational are associated with different perceived and objective environmental characteristics. Modifications to these features may change the physical activity behavior of residents exposed to them.
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            Relationship between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity

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              Examining the Impacts of Residential Self‐Selection on Travel Behaviour: A Focus on Empirical Findings

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                patricia.collins@queensu.ca
                12jpt3@queensu.ca
                afein@mcmaster.ca
                jim.dunn@mcmaster.ca
                Journal
                BMC Public Health
                BMC Public Health
                BMC Public Health
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-2458
                28 July 2018
                28 July 2018
                2018
                : 18
                : 933
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8331, GRID grid.410356.5, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, , Queen’s University, ; Kingston, ON Canada
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8227, GRID grid.25073.33, Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, , McMaster University, ; Hamilton, ON Canada
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8227, GRID grid.25073.33, Department of Health, Aging & Society, , McMaster University, ; Hamilton, ON Canada
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0009-736X
                Article
                5858
                10.1186/s12889-018-5858-y
                6064141
                30055595
                f3fb999e-353f-461c-a61d-fed6c08881fc
                © The Author(s). 2018

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 19 January 2018
                : 17 July 2018
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000226, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care;
                Award ID: 06672
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Public health
                walkability,built environment,walk score®,physical activity,walking,self-efficacy,pilot study,longitudinal study,ontario

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