Giles-Corti G, Donovan, R. Relative influences of individual, social environmental, and physical environmental correlates of walking. American Journal of Public Health. 2003; 93(9): 1583-1589.
Summary: This article discusses the benefits of incidental exercise and asserts that most people are not getting enough of it because of constraints in the individual, social, and physical environments. The authors explain their attempts to quantify factors associated with walking.
General Concensus: Health Sciences students had several critiques of the methodologies in this survey and itsspatial access model. Class discussions revealed most students would prefer to review a more recent and/or sophisticated study.
Additional Comments:
"One thing I took away from it, however, was the concept of the "distance of decay" factor. It is certainly relevant in the food access literature, that people will only walk or bike to certain neighborhood retail outlets over a decaying idea of how far it is to travel there."(UPPA)
"I just have a hard time with studies that do not admit health disparities based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation and ability-level. The worse off in terms of health are the worse off in all ways- walking and self-care look so different through this lens, these lives." (Social Work)