Kids in space: Measuring children's residential neighborhoods and other destinations using activity space GPS and wearable camera data.
INTRODUCTION
Defining the boundary of children's 'neighborhoods' has important implications for understanding the contextual influences on child health. Additionally, insight into activities that occur outside people's neighborhoods may indicate exposures that place-based studies cannot detect. This study aimed to 1) extend current neighborhood research, using data from wearable cameras and GPS devices that were worn over several days in an urban setting; 2) define the boundary of children's neighborhoods by using leisure time activity space data; and 3) determine the destinations visited by children in their leisure time, outside their neighborhoods.


METHOD
One hundred and fourteen children (mean age 12y) from Wellington, New Zealand wore wearable cameras and GPS recorders. Residential Euclidean buffers at incremental distances were paired with GPS data (thereby identifying time spent in different places) to explore alternative definitions of neighborhood boundaries. Children's neighborhood boundary was at 500 m. A newly developed software application was used to identify 'destinations' visited outside the neighborhood by specifying space-time parameters. Image data from wearable cameras were used to determine the type of destination.


RESULTS
Children spent over half of their leisure time within 500 m of their homes. Children left their neighborhood predominantly to visit school (for leisure purposes), other residential locations (e.g. to visit friends) and food retail outlets (e.g. convenience stores, fast food outlets). Children spent more time at food retail outlets than at structured sport and in outdoor recreation locations combined.


CONCLUSION
Person-centered neighborhood definitions may serve to better represent children's everyday experiences and neighborhood exposures than previous methods based on place-based measures. As schools and other residential locations (friends and family) are important destinations outside the neighborhood, such destinations should be taken into account. The combination of image data and activity space GPS data provides a more robust approach to understanding children's neighborhoods and activity spaces.
['Chambers|T|T|', 'Pearson|A L|AL|', 'Kawachi|I|I|', 'Rzotkiewicz|Z|Z|', 'Stanley|J|J|', 'Smith|M|M|', 'Barr|M|M|', 'Ni Mhurchu|C|C|', 'Signal|L|L|']
D000293:Adolescent D002648:Child D002652:Child Behavior D002755:Choice Behavior D015444:Exercise D005260:Female D040362:Geographic Information Systems D062305:Geographic Mapping D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009520:New Zealand D016012:Poisson Distribution D011998:Recreation D012111:Residence Characteristics D014195:Travel D014741:Video Recording D016138:Walking
Children Neighborhoods Activity spaces GPS Wearable cameras Urban Everyday lives children's destinations