BACKGROUND The extent to which neighbourhood characteristics explain accumulation of health behaviours is poorly understood. We examined whether neighbourhood disadvantage was associated with co-occurrence of behaviour-related risk factors, and how much of the neighbourhood differences in the co-occurrence can be explained by individual and neighbourhood level covariates. METHODS The study po...

Little is known about the potential effects of neighbourhood environment on positive mental health in older people. We examined cross-sectional associations between the index of multiple deprivation score of the census area of residence, perceptions of neighbourhood cohesion and neighbourhood problems and mental wellbeing, as measured by the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, in 1157 men...

Neighbourhood structure and size are important parameters in local search algorithms. This is also true for generalised local search algorithms like simulated annealing. It has been shown that the performance of simulated annealing can be improved by adopting a suitable neighbourhood size. However, previous studies usually assumed that the neighbourhood size was xed during search. This paper pr...

Much work in the late 1990s and early 2000s highlighted the emerging role of the neighbourhood social environment in public health research. These works described the influence of neighbourhood social processes on individual health and well-being outcomes and highlighted the need for a better understanding of how we conceptualise and measure the social environment (i.e., Earls & Carlson, 2001; ...

During their life course, older persons' income level may become discrepant with the socio-economic status of their neighbourhood. This study examines whether and how such discrepancies affect older persons' physical and mental health. Using baseline data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, 2,540 non-institutionalised persons aged 55-85 years were classified based on self-reported inco...

Neighbourhood effects studies have demonstrated an association between area deprivation and smoking behaviour whereby people living in deprived neighbourhoods are more likely to smoke than those in non-deprived neighbourhoods. This evidence though is based largely upon data that ignores long term exposures to neighbourhood contexts and is confounded by neighbourhood selection bias. In this stud...

There is a substantial literature on the explanation of neighbourhood change. Most of this literature concentrates on identifying factors and developments behind processes of decline. This paper reviews the literature, focusing on the identification of patterns of neighbourhood change, and argues that the concept of neighbourhood governance is a missing link in attempts to explain these pattern...

This study aimed to explore whether individual cognitions and neighbourhood social capital strengthen each other in their relation with engaging in sports at least three times per week. Cross-sectional analyses on data from the last wave of the YouRAction trial (2009-2010, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; baseline response: 98%) were conducted. In total 1129 had data on the last wave questionnaire (...

OBJECTIVES Few studies have explored the impact of neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) on health behaviours in youths in Germany. Our aim was to investigate the association of individual and neighbourhood SES with physical activity (PA) and screen time (ST) in students aged 12-13 years in Berlin. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Secondary schools (high schools and integrated secon...