Neighbourhood walkability and pedometer and accelerometer-assessed walking in Canadian adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Urban planners consider walkable neighbourhoods to be ones characterized by a variety of services and destinations easily accessed through well-connected street networks. Residents of more walkable neighbourhoods report higher levels of utilitarian walking compared to residents of less walkable neighbourhoods. The relationship between neighbourhood walkability and objectively assessed total walking is less clear.ObjectivesThe objective of my thesis was to determine if neighbourhood walkability (based on Geographic Information System (GIS)-derived street connectivity, land use mix and population density) is associated with higher levels of accelerometer or pedometer-assessed total walking in the general Canadian adult population and in adults with type 2 diabetes.MethodsI conducted six complementary studies. My first study was a systematic review and meta-analysis. My second and third studies were methodological pieces in which I assessed the validity of the walkability measures that I used in my three main substantive studies. In my fourth study, I investigated the associations of GIS-derived neighbourhood walkability and the publicly available Walk Score® with accelerometer-assessed walking and participant-reported utilitarian walking in adults who participated in Cycle 1 (2007-2009) of the Canadian Community Health Survey. In my fifth study I investigated how GIS-derived neighbourhood walkability and three other measures of walkability (i.e., in-field audits, the Walk Score® and participant-reported measures) were associated with pedometer-assessed walking in a sample of adults with type 2 diabetes. In my sixth study, I utilized integrated Global Positioning System (GPS)-accelerometer technology in a sample of adults with type 2 diabetes to determine if neighbourhood walkability was associated with total physical activity occurring specifically within home neighbourhoods.ResultsBased on studies from Belgium, the Czech Republic and Japan, I demonstrated that adults who live in high compared to low walkable neighbourhoods accumulate 766 more steps/day (95% credible interval (CrI) 250, 1271. This association does not appear to hold in the Canadian context. Conclusion Improving neighbourhood walkability is not the "magic bullet" to achieving population-level increases in total physical activity. Other factors will need to be targeted to facilitate increases in total physical activity. Examples include reducing seasonal deficits in walking and improving perceptions of neighbourhood walkability.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".