An assessment of the relevance of the home neighbourhood for understanding environmental influences on physical activity: How far from home do people roam?

Hillsdon, Melvyn, Coombes, Emma, Griew, Pippa and Jones, Andy (2015) An assessment of the relevance of the home neighbourhood for understanding environmental influences on physical activity: How far from home do people roam? International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 12. ISSN 1479-5868

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Abstract

Background: The choice of geographical unit of analysis in studies of the built environment and physical activity has typically been restricted to the home neighbourhood where only a small proportion of physical activity may actually be undertaken. This study aimed to examine the distance from home at which physical activity takes place and how this varies by personal and neighbourhood characteristics.  Methods: A cross-sectional, population based study of 195 people in the North West region of England, aged 18 to 91 years, clustered in 60 localities (small geographical areas of ~125 households). Individual socio-demographic data were collected by computer-aided personal interviews and physical activity was characterised by accelerometer and Global Positioning System (GPS) data. The locations of periods of light, moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity (LMVPA) undertaken outdoors were linked to measures of the neighbourhood around the home and distance from home.  Results: Sixty per cent of outdoors LMVPA took place outside of the proximal home neighbourhood (800m buffer). Distances from home where median levels of LMVPA were undertaken varied by gender (p<0.05), home location, area deprivation, and car ownership (all p<0.001).  Conclusions: Objectively measured physical activity appears to vary appreciably by participant characteristics and home location, although for many settings a large proportion is undertaken outside of the home neighbourhood, suggesting the characterisation of neighbourhoods close to home will fail to properly capture the environmental influences on physical activity.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2015 Hillsdon et al. Open Access This 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.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	physical activity,environment,neighbourhood,accelerometer,global positioning systems
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Epidemiology and Public Health Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Business and Local Government Data Research Centre (former - to 2023) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Promotion Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Public Health and Health Services Research (former - to 2023)
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2015 16:00
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2022 08:18
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54122
DOI:	10.1186/s12966-015-0260-y

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