Investigating the methodological applicability of intersectionality to physical activity and smoking in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In Canada, substantial health inequities have been documented by income, education, gender, race, and sexuality. Researchers examining such inequities have typically employed ‘additive’ analyses where these variables are treated independently of one another. Some scholars have argued that the additive approach cannot fully illuminate health inequities by class, gender, race, and sexuality, calling for ‘multiplicative’ approaches inspired by intersectionality theory to replace additive approaches. PURPOSE: I investigate the applicability of intersectionality theory for explicating two health practices - physical exercise and smoking - using Canadian data. I predict that intersections of classism, patriarchy, racism, and heterosexism at macro levels of Canadian society affect the incidence of exercise and smoking at the individual level, in the case of physical exercise as a desirable pursuit which is facilitated by the privilege that accrues to multiple dominant-group identities and in the case of smoking as a coping mechanism for dealing with the oppressive stressors that accrue to multiple subordinate-group identities. METHODS: Informed by the theoretical underpinnings of current intersectional scholarship, I compare the ability of the additive and intersectional approaches to explicate these two health practices in Canada. Using nationally-representative data from the Canadian Community Health Survey Cycles 2.1 and 3.1 and binary logistic regression modelling, I examine and compare the main effects of class, race, gender, and sexuality (additivity) and then four-, three-, and two-way interaction effects between class, race, gender, and sexuality (multiplicativity) as predictors of physical activity and smoking. RESULTS: I find that results from the additive models are consistent with previous empirical research on physical activity and smoking. The interaction models produce statically significant three- and two-way interactions for physical activity and smoking that are complex in nature and consistent with some but not all of the predictions derived from intersectionality theory. CONCLUSION: This study challenges prevailing understandings of social causes of health behaviours by class, gender, race, and sexuality that have been generated by additive modes of analysis. The study also suggests that, in regard to physical activity and smoking, some but perhaps not all tenets of intersectionality are potentially useful in explaining these health practices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.068 | 0.155 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".