Godongwana Motlatso, Gama Khulu, Maluleke Vongani, Micklesfield Lisa K, Odekunle Damilola, Wasnyo Yves Florent, Elouna Boris, Ngwa Edwin, Lopes Adalberto, Balarabe Muhammad Rabiu, Coringrato Eva, McGushin Alice, Oni Tolu, Foley Louise, Canelas Tiago
SAMRC-Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Burden of Disease Research Unit, South Africa Medical Research Council, Tygerberg, South Africa.
J Urban Health. 2024 Dec;101(6):1221-1234. doi: 10.1007/s11524-024-00914-3. Epub 2024 Sep 10.
Understanding how urban environments shape physical activity is critical in rapidly urbanizing countries such as South Africa. We assessed the reliability of virtual audits for characterizing urban features related to physical activity in Soweto, South Africa. We used the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes Global tool to characterize pedestrian-related features from Google Street View images in four neighborhoods of Soweto. Neighborhoods were selected to represent different levels of deprivation. Inter-rater reliability was analyzed according to the rater's familiarity with the local area. The results show a higher inter-rater reliability was observed among auditors with greater contextual familiarity. Many measurements however generated inconclusive results due to either low variability in the raters' responses or the absence of the features in the streets. It is evident from our findings that virtual audits are efficient tools that can be used to assess the built environment. However, to ensure meaningful use of these tools in diverse settings, we recommend that auditors comprise of people with contextual familiarity.
了解城市环境如何影响身体活动对于南非等快速城市化的国家至关重要。我们评估了虚拟审计在描述南非索韦托与身体活动相关的城市特征方面的可靠性。我们使用了全球步行街景观微观审计工具，从索韦托四个社区的谷歌街景图像中描述与行人相关的特征。选择这些社区以代表不同程度的贫困状况。根据评估者对当地的熟悉程度分析了评分者间的可靠性。结果表明，在对当地情况更熟悉的审计人员中，观察到了更高的评分者间可靠性。然而，由于评分者反应的变异性较低或街道上缺乏相关特征，许多测量结果都没有定论。从我们的研究结果可以明显看出，虚拟审计是可用于评估建成环境的有效工具。然而，为确保在不同环境中有效使用这些工具，我们建议审计人员应由熟悉当地情况的人员组成。
