Keywords: geospatial, activity space, GIS
The environments visited by adolescents during their daily activities expose them to local contexts that can influence behaviors in either a risky or beneficial manner. There are substantial challenges to validly measure these contextual influences, which is highlighted by the common method of assigning the characteristics of the person’s home location. This is done by using archival data associated with the U.S. Census tract, zip code area, or block group in which the person resides. However, the typical mobility of urban adolescents exposes them to many environments, which is not captured through a single home location. Despite this issue, previous research has found that even this limited measure of social context can be related to behavioral health outcomes (e.g., violence, victimization, substance use). Expanded measurement of the full array of environments presents an opportunity to improve models of adolescent behaviors so that novel pathways for prevention can be identified. The core hypothesis is that adolescent activity space significantly differs by gender and ethnicity. Young men and LGBTQ persons are hypothesized to spend a greater amount of time in risky environments than young women. Ethnic minorities are hypothesized to have greater exposure to risky areas. The data are from the study “Developmental Pathways of Violence and Substance Use in a High Risk Sample,” funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant 5R01DA041231. Geospatial activity space is assessed for each individual adolescent, separately for week-day and week-end activities using an interactive web-based GIS system. Geographic measures such as total distance and area of the activity space and amount of activity space away from home, in high risk areas, and in low risk areas will be analyzed using visual and statistical techniques.