Boslaugh Sarah E, Luke Douglas A, Brownson Ross C, Naleid Kimberly S, Kreuter Matthew W
Health Communication Research Laboratory, Department of Community Health, School of Public Health, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63104, USA.
J Urban Health. 2004 Dec;81(4):671-81. doi: 10.1093/jurban/jth150.
Lack of physical activity among American adults is a serious public health concern. Many factors influence activity levels, and most research has focused on either individual factors, such as race and income, or on characteristics of the physical environment, such as the availability of parks. Our study used a cross-sectional multilevel design to examine the influences of individual- and neighborhood-level characteristics on participant's perceptions of their neighborhood as an appropriate venue for physical activity. Study participants were 1,073 African American and white adults living in the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area. Individual-level information was gathered from self-administered questionnaires; neighborhood-level data for these same individuals were obtained from the 2000 US Census. We found that both individual and neighborhood characteristics were significant predictors of how individuals perceived physical activity opportunities in their neighborhood, and that African Americans perceived their neighborhoods as less safe and less pleasant for physical activity than did whites, regardless of the racial composition of the neighborhood. We suggest that any evaluation of opportunities for physical activity within a neighborhood should include consideration of resident's perceptions of the safety and pleasantness of using them, and that the role of perceived and actual neighborhood conditions in explaining disparities in physical activity between African American and other populations should be examined further.
美国成年人缺乏体育活动是一个严重的公共卫生问题。许多因素会影响活动水平，并且大多数研究要么聚焦于个体因素，比如种族和收入，要么聚焦于物理环境的特征，比如公园的可及性。我们的研究采用横断面多层次设计，以检验个体层面和社区层面的特征对参与者将其社区视为体育活动适宜场所的认知的影响。研究参与者为居住在密苏里州圣路易斯市大都市区的1073名非裔美国人和白人成年人。个体层面的信息通过自填问卷收集；这些人的社区层面数据则取自2000年美国人口普查。我们发现，个体特征和社区特征都是个体如何看待其社区体育活动机会的重要预测因素，并且非裔美国人认为他们的社区在体育活动方面不如白人社区安全和宜人，无论社区的种族构成如何。我们建议，对社区内体育活动机会的任何评估都应考虑居民对使用这些机会的安全性和宜人程度的认知，并且应进一步研究感知到的和实际的社区状况在解释非裔美国人和其他人群体育活动差异方面的作用。
