Children's mobility and environmental exposures in urban landscapes: A cross-sectional study of 10–11 year old Scottish children

Research into how the environment affects health and related behaviour is typically limited in at least two ways: it represents the environment to which people are exposed using fixed areal units, and, it focuses on one or two environmental characteristics only. This study developed a methodology for describing children's mobility and the complexity of their environmental exposure across a 1934 km2 study area, including urban, suburban and rural zones. It conceptualised and modelled this area as a landscape, comprised of spatially discrete amenities, infrastructure features, differing land covers/use and broader environmental contexts. The model used a 25 m2 grid system (∼3 million cells). For each cell, there was detailed built-environment information. We joined data for 100 10/11-year-old children who had worn GPS trackers to provide individual-level mobility information for one week during 2015/16 to our model. Using negative binomial regression, we explored which landscape features were associated with a child visiting that space and time spent there. We examined whether relationships between the features across our study area and children's use of the space differed by their sociodemographic characteristics.