TY - JOUR
T1 - Residential self-selection bias in the estimation of built environment effects on physical activity between adolescence and young adulthood
AU - Boone-Heinonen, Janne
AU - Guilkey, David K.
AU - Evenson, Kelly R.
AU - Gordon-Larsen, Penny
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (R01-HD057194 and R01-HD041375, R01-HD39183); a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC SIP No. 5-00); and grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Active Living Research and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (R36-EH000380) and The Henry Dearman and Martha Stucker Dissertation Fellowship in the Royster Society of Fellows at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There were no potential or real conflicts of financial or personal interest with the financial sponsors of the scientific project. The financial sponsors had no role in the study (design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, or decision to submit the manuscript for publication). This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, CPC, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 addhealth@unc.edu. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. The authors would like to thank Brian Frizzelle, Marc Peterson, Chris Mankoff, James D. Stewart, Phil Bardsley, and Diane Kaczor of the University of North Carolina, Carolina Population Center (CPC) and the CPC Spatial Analysis Unit for creation of the environmental variables. The authors also thank Drs. Barry M. Popkin, Linda S. Adair, and Yan Song for their critical review of the manuscript and Ms. Frances Dancy for her helpful administrative assistance.
PY - 2010/10/4
Y1 - 2010/10/4
N2 - Background: Built environment research is dominated by cross-sectional designs, which are particularly vulnerable to residential self-selection bias resulting from health-related attitudes, neighborhood preferences, or other unmeasured characteristics related to both neighborhood choice and health-related outcomes.Methods: We used cohort data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (United States; Wave I, 1994-95; Wave III, 2001-02; n = 12,701) and a time-varying geographic information system. Longitudinal relationships between moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) bouts and built and socioeconomic environment measures (landcover diversity, pay and public physical activity facilities per 10,000 population, street connectivity, median household income, and crime rate) from adolescence to young adulthood were estimated using random effects models (biased by unmeasured confounders) and fixed effects models (within-person estimator, which adjusts for unmeasured confounders that are stable over time).Results: Random effects models yielded null associations except for negative crime-MVPA associations [coefficient (95% CI): -0.056 (-0.083, -0.029) in males, -0.061 (-0.090, -0.033) in females]. After controlling for measured and time invariant unmeasured characteristics using within-person estimators, MVPA was higher with greater physical activity pay facilities in males [coefficient (95% CI): 0.024 (0.006, 0.042)], and lower with higher crime rates in males [coefficient (95% CI): -0.107 (-0.140, -0.075)] and females [coefficient (95% CI): -0.046 (-0.083, -0.009)]. Other associations were null or in the counter-intuitive direction.Conclusions: Comparison of within-person estimates to estimates unadjusted for unmeasured characteristics suggest that residential self-selection can bias associations toward the null, as opposed to its typical characterization as a positive confounder. Differential environment-MVPA associations by residential relocation suggest that studies examining changes following residential relocation may be vulnerable to selection bias. The authors discuss complexities of adjusting for residential self-selection and residential relocation, particularly during the adolescent to young adult transition.
AB - Background: Built environment research is dominated by cross-sectional designs, which are particularly vulnerable to residential self-selection bias resulting from health-related attitudes, neighborhood preferences, or other unmeasured characteristics related to both neighborhood choice and health-related outcomes.Methods: We used cohort data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (United States; Wave I, 1994-95; Wave III, 2001-02; n = 12,701) and a time-varying geographic information system. Longitudinal relationships between moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) bouts and built and socioeconomic environment measures (landcover diversity, pay and public physical activity facilities per 10,000 population, street connectivity, median household income, and crime rate) from adolescence to young adulthood were estimated using random effects models (biased by unmeasured confounders) and fixed effects models (within-person estimator, which adjusts for unmeasured confounders that are stable over time).Results: Random effects models yielded null associations except for negative crime-MVPA associations [coefficient (95% CI): -0.056 (-0.083, -0.029) in males, -0.061 (-0.090, -0.033) in females]. After controlling for measured and time invariant unmeasured characteristics using within-person estimators, MVPA was higher with greater physical activity pay facilities in males [coefficient (95% CI): 0.024 (0.006, 0.042)], and lower with higher crime rates in males [coefficient (95% CI): -0.107 (-0.140, -0.075)] and females [coefficient (95% CI): -0.046 (-0.083, -0.009)]. Other associations were null or in the counter-intuitive direction.Conclusions: Comparison of within-person estimates to estimates unadjusted for unmeasured characteristics suggest that residential self-selection can bias associations toward the null, as opposed to its typical characterization as a positive confounder. Differential environment-MVPA associations by residential relocation suggest that studies examining changes following residential relocation may be vulnerable to selection bias. The authors discuss complexities of adjusting for residential self-selection and residential relocation, particularly during the adolescent to young adult transition.
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U2 - 10.1186/1479-5868-7-70
DO - 10.1186/1479-5868-7-70
M3 - Article
C2 - 20920341
AN - SCOPUS:77957282860
SN - 1479-5868
VL - 7
JO - International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
JF - International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
M1 - 70
ER -