There goes the neighborhood effect: bias owing to nondifferential measurement error in the construction of neighborhood contextual measures.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Multilevel studies of neighborhood effects on health frequently aggregate individual-level data to create contextual measures. For example, percent of residents living in poverty and median household income are both aggregations of Census data on individual-level household income. Because household income is sensitive and complex, it is likely to be reported with error.

Methods

To assess the impact of such error on effect estimates for neighborhood contextual factors, we conducted simulation studies to relate neighborhood measures derived from Census data to individual body mass index, varying the extent of nondifferential misclassification/measurement error in the underlying Census data. We then explored the impact on the magnitude of bias owing to the form of va

SUBMITTER: Mooney SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4504192 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature