Neighborhood Built and Social Environment and Physical Activity and Weight Status

描述（由申请人提供）：超重和肥胖是一系列健康问题的危险因素。超重和肥胖的流行率在美国人口的各个阶层中都在稳步上升。为了寻找导致肥胖流行的因素，超重/肥胖研究现在集中在饮食和身体活动之间的平衡（PA）上。为了解决肥胖流行病，研究人员已经开始探索肥胖相关结果的更广泛的背景决定因素，希望找到促进PA和遏制肥胖上升趋势的新方法。本研究试图通过研究美国社区建筑环境和社会人口背景对个人PA和体重状况的影响程度来为文献做出贡献。本研究运用社会认知理论和生态学模型，采用2000年人口普查数据、基于gis的不同来源数据、基于其他地方的汇总数据和1999 - 2008年的连续NHANES数据作为研究的基础。我们的问题是：1)背景建筑环境和社会人口因素如何影响客观和主观测量的PA和体重状况，而不是个人特征？2)背景建筑环境因素和社会人口因素对PA和体重状况的影响有何相互作用和中介作用？这些观察到的情境效应是否部分由个体社会心理途径介导？3)邻里因素如何与个体因素相互作用影响PA和体重状况？4)上述关系对当地社区地理聚合方法的敏感性如何？5)区域间的空间依赖性如何影响上述分析得出的观测格局？这个项目在五个方面超越了目前的研究。首先，它研究了更广泛的基于地方的背景特征，包括县和县两级。其次，这是一项覆盖整个美国的全国性研究。第三，它既检查了自我报告，也检查了PA和体重状况的客观评估。第四，它提供了一个独特的机会来检查多个层面（例如，个人-社区，社区-县）的相互作用。第五，它检验了本文献中研究不足的假设，如可修改面积单位问题和空间依赖问题。该项目结合了社会学、城市规划、地理学和空间流行病学的观点；它将这些学科连接起来，制定研究，解决一系列对研究PA和体重状况的环境决定因素至关重要的问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Overweight and obesity are risk factors for a range of health problems. The prevalence of overweight and obesity has been steadily rising among every segment of the U.S. population. In searching for factors driving the obesity epidemic, the overweight/obesity research is now focused on the balance between diet and physical activity (PA). To address the obesity epidemic, researchers have begun to explore the wider contextual determinants of obesity-related outcomes in hope of identifying new approaches to promoting PA and curbing the rising tide of obesity. This study attempts to contribute to the literature by examining the extent to which neighborhood built environments and socio-demographic contexts influence individual PA and weight status in the United States. To guide this investigation, we employ the social cognitive theory and ecological models and use multiple data sources including the 2000 Census data, GIS-based data from various sources, other place-based aggregate data, and continuous NHANES from 1999 to 2008. We ask: 1) How do contextual built environmental and socio-demographic factors affect objectively and subjectively measured PA and weight status over and above individual characteristics? 2) What are the interacting and mediating effects among contextual built environmental and socio-demographic factors in their impacts on PA and weight status? Are these observed contextual effects partly mediated by individual psychosocial pathways? 3) How do neighborhood factors interact with individual factors to impact PA and weight status? 4) How are the above relationships sensitive to geographic aggregation methods of local neighborhoods? 5) How does spatial dependency among local neighborhoods affect the observed patterns produced from the above analysis? This project goes beyond current research in five ways. First, it examines a wider range of place-based contextual features at both tract- and county-levels. Second, it is a national study covering the entire U.S. Third, it examines both self-reports and objective assessments of PA and weight status. Fourth, it provides a unique opportunity to examine interactions across a number of levels (e.g., individual- neighborhood, neighborhood-county). Fifth, it tests under-studied hypotheses in this literature such as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and the spatial dependency issues. This project combines perspectives from sociology, urban planning, geography, and spatial epidemiology; it bridges these disciplines to formulate research that addresses a set of questions vital to research on environmental determinants of PA and weight status.