Understanding community context and adult health changes in China: development of an urbanicity scale.

ABSTRACT: The classification of places as either urban or rural is typically based on an absolute threshold of population and/or population density. However, conceptual definitions of urbanization and urbanicity encompass dimensions beyond solely population size and population density. Multiple important distinguishing urban characteristics beyond population size have been described. The crude classification of places as urban or rural coupled with infrequent updates to this information creates a measure that is prone to misclassification error. An improved measure of urbanicity would draw information from the domains that characterize urban and rural places, would be sensitive to changes over time, and would represent gradations on the continuum from rural to urban environments. The goal of the cur

SUBMITTER: Jones-Smith JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2942954 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature