Abstract
Neighborhood context is recognized as an important predictor of individual-level behaviors and health outcomes (Pickett and Pearl 2001; Lee and Cubbin 2002; Sampson 2003). Neighborhoods, however, are difficult to define both in theory and in practice, and are often drawn to follow existing administrative boundaries or sampling schemes, or must be set arbitrarily due to a lack of sufficient data. Given the role of neighborhood context in influencing health outcomes, it is crucial that the area of influence surrounding the unit of analysis (be it a person, household, etc.) be properly defined. As already discussed in previous chapters, if we do not identify neighborhoods correctly, we cannot properly evaluate neighborhood effects. Defining neighborhoods is a challenge across the social sciences; investigations of the role of neighborhood context in decision making and shaping of individual-level outcomes are seen in public health, geography, demography, and sociology with no consistent approach to identifying and evaluating neighborhood effects. In this chapter, we outline several types of neighborhood definitions from the literature, and then, using data from the Women’s Health Study of Accra, implement a spatial model together with a simulation approach to examine how two alternative neighborhood definitions affect modeling of individual-level health outcomes.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded in part by grant number R01 HD054906 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (``Health, Poverty and Place in Accra, Ghana,'' John R. Weeks, Project Director/Principal Investigator). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health. Additional funding was provided by Hewlett/PRB (``Reproductive and Overall Health Outcomes and Their Economic Consequences for Households in Accra, Ghana,'' Allan G. Hill, Project Director/Principal Investigator). The 2003 Women's Health Study of Accra was funded by the World Health Organization, the US Agency for International Development, and the Fulbright New Century Scholars Award (Allan G. Hill, Principal Investigator).
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Zvoleff, A., An, L., Stoler, J., Weeks, J.R. (2013). What If Neighbors’ Neighborhoods Differ? The Influence of Neighborhood Definitions of Health Outcomes in Accra. In: Weeks, J., Hill, A., Stoler, J. (eds) Spatial Inequalities. GeoJournal Library, vol 110. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6732-4_8
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