What you see is what you get? Questioning the relationship between objective and subjective appraisals of neighbourhood resources in relation to health.

backgroundSome research concerned with place and health has used the study of opportunity structures in neighbourhoods to understand how place might get under the skin. It has become somewhat common to assume that objective indicators of opportunity structures are in some way equivalent to people's access to them. The general objective of this study, therefore, was to evaluate the level of convergence between objective and subjective evaluations of neighbourhood resources in Winnipeg, Canada.

methodsWinnipeg residents (n = 1,102) were sampled from 59 neighbourhood units to permit hierarchical linear modelling and to enable the testing of Winnipeg residents' individual-level subjective appraisals within neighbourhood-level objective characteristics. Several databases provided objective neighbourhood data on premature mortality rates, crime, housing, recreation programs, education, and household income. To evaluate subjective appraisals of these resources, data were gathered from the Winnipeg Quality of Life Survey (WQLS).

resultsWe found that, when controlling for individual- and neighbourhood-level confounders, the objective data at hand match relatively well with participants' subjective perceptions of housing and crime, while neighbourhood-level premature mortality rates and the objective numbers of recreation programs across neighbourhood are not significant predictors of their subjective counterparts.

conclusionIt may be that objective measures of some opportunity structures should be accompanied by subjective measures to ensure a more complete understanding of the impact of these resources on population health.