A validation study for measuring Asian- and Hispanic-serving sociocultural institutions in neighborhoods using business listing data and potential implications for health

Ethnic enclaves influence the health of Asian American and Hispanic or Latinx/a/o populations, likely via neighborhood social, economic, and built environments. To facilitate studies aiming to disentangle these specific neighborhood mechanisms, we describe the creation and validation of two novel measures—Asian-serving and Hispanic-serving sociocultural institutions (SCIs)—to estimate the social, cultural, and economic character of ethnic enclaves in California. Business listing data were used to identify SCIs or businesses that promote cultural and social identity, including arts, civic, historical, religious, social service, and membership organizations. Keyword searches of business names were used to identify potential Asian- or Hispanic-serving SCIs. An online audit of 1,627 businesses within 12 cities confirmed the validity of using keyword searches to assess whether census tracts were high or low in Asian- or Hispanic-serving SCIs (sensitivity: 63%–100%, specificity: 86%–95%; positive predictive value: 63%–89%). In exploratory regression analyses, high presence of SCIs (compared to low presence) may be associated with neighborhood-level health indicators, including greater percentages of residents who had an annual checkup in majority Asian census tracts and lower percentages of residents who were current smokers in majority Asian and Hispanic census tracts. This approach advances methodology in measurement of neighborhood sociocultural environments.