Session: Novel Approaches for Capturing and Analyzing Geographically Informed Behavioral Health Data (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

Adolescent health risk behavior is highly contextualized, but obtaining suitably granular context data to study it is challenging. In this symposium we focus on some of our recent research in urban neighborhoods to explore the boundary between geospatial and established social network methodologies, attempting to identify theoretically meaningful and methodologically tractable approaches to prevention. Healthful adolescent development may be compromised as risk enhancing neighborhoods influence health behaviors such as substance use. Stress associated with living in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of disorder confers risk for substance use and disorders. Neighborhood characteristics are known to influence adolescents’ perceptions of safety and risk which are associated with substance use. An important construct that provides methodological guidance for addressing place characteristics and health outcomes is activity space. Activity space can be defined as comprising all the locations that an individual has direct contact with as a result of his or her daily activities. Activity spaces are the manifestation of our spatial lives, serving as an index representing routine locations and all the accompanying psychological, social, and health-related experiences of these places. Research on activity spaces has also suggested that the places a person frequents outside the home may expose him or her to a variety of psychological, social, and geographic factors that likely influence substance use, but that may not be observed within the home location. Towards this end, the study of the geography of risk and protection within the social ecology of urban youth is important to advancing prevention science.

This symposium will demonstrate novel approaches for capturing and analyzing geographically informed data, through the presentation of three sub-studies. The parent study from which these presentations are drawn was a NIDA funded longitudinal project titled, “Social-spatial risk and protective mechanisms in urban adolescent substance use.”

This symposium will include three presentations covering the following topics:

A. Urban Adolescent Depression Symptoms and Substance Use Involvement and the Moderating Effect of Peer Networks and Activity Space

B. Creating a Bipartite Network Among Urban Adolescents Using GIS Derived Co-location Data

C. The validity of GIS collected activity space data with urban adolescents

The presentations will be followed by a nationally recognized discussant to reflect on presentations strengths and challenges for prevention science. The goals of this symposium are:

1. Demonstrate methodologies of assessing and analyzing activity space.

2. Through presentations and audience discussion, examine the benefits and challenges of utilizing activity space data.