Cummins Steven, Macintyre Sally, Davidson Sharon, Ellaway Anne
MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK.
Health Place. 2005 Sep;11(3):249-60. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2004.05.003.
Investigating the role of the social and material environment in determining mortality, morbidity and health behaviour has become increasingly popular in epidemiological research. However, despite calls to use more innovative data about areas, there is still a tendency to use 'off the shelf' data derived from pre-existing routine surveys and censuses. Many researchers argue that innovative ecological data about areas is difficult to collect and use effectively, difficult to compare and hard to interpret and analyse. This paper considers an approach to obtaining and interpreting innovative ecological data, and is based on a case study of empirical data collection in the UK. The paper focuses on issues of scale, quality, generation, use and interpretation of data. While it is important to start with a priori theories about the way specific domains of the local environment might influence health, we report that finding robust measures of these domains at the correct spatial scale is difficult and time consuming. However we argue that the attempt to measure specific chains of causation is important enough for public health for this approach to followed and improved upon.
在流行病学研究中，探究社会和物质环境在决定死亡率、发病率及健康行为方面所起的作用已变得越来越普遍。然而，尽管有人呼吁使用更多关于地区的创新性数据，但仍存在一种倾向，即使用源自现有常规调查和普查的“现成”数据。许多研究人员认为，关于地区的创新性生态数据难以有效收集和使用，难以进行比较，也难以解释和分析。本文考虑了一种获取和解释创新性生态数据的方法，并基于英国实证数据收集的案例研究。本文重点关注数据的规模、质量、生成、使用和解释等问题。虽然从关于当地环境特定领域可能影响健康方式的先验理论入手很重要，但我们报告称，在正确的空间尺度上找到这些领域的可靠衡量指标既困难又耗时。然而，我们认为，尝试衡量特定的因果链对公共卫生非常重要，值得采用并改进这种方法。
