Faculty Collaboration Database

Constructing Residential Histories in a General Population-Based Representative Sample. Am J Epidemiol 2024 Feb 05;193(2):348-359

Date

09/16/2023

Pubmed ID

37715463

Pubmed Central ID

PMC10840075

DOI

10.1093/aje/kwad188

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85184015231 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   16 Citations

Abstract

Research on neighborhoods and health typically measures neighborhood context at a single point in time. However, neighborhood exposures accumulate over the life course, influenced by both residential mobility and neighborhood change, with potential implications for estimating the impact of neighborhoods on health. Commercial databases offer fine-grained longitudinal residential address data that can enrich life-course spatial epidemiology research, and validated methods for reconstructing residential histories from these databases are needed. Our study draws on unique data from a geographically diverse, population-based representative sample of adult Wisconsin residents and the LexisNexis (New York, New York) Accurint, a commercial personal profile database, to develop a systematic and reliable methodology for constructing individual residential histories. Our analysis demonstrated that creating residential histories across diverse geographical contexts is feasible, and it highlights differences in the information obtained from available residential histories by age, education, race/ethnicity, and rural/urban/suburban residency. Researchers should consider potential address data availability and information biases favoring socioeconomically advantaged individuals and their implications for studying health inequalities. Despite these limitations, LexisNexis data can generate varied residential exposure metrics and be linked to contextual data to enrich research into the contextual determinants of health at varied geographic scales.

Author List

Xu W, Agnew M, Kamis C, Schultz A, Salas S, Malecki K, Engelman M

Author

Wei Xu PhD Assistant Professor in the Institute for Health and Humanity department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Bias
Epidemiologic Studies
Humans
Population Dynamics
Residence Characteristics