Choice of neighborhood scale affects associations between environmental attributes and health-related outcomes. This phenomenon, a part of the modifiable areal unit problem, has been described fully in geography but not as it relates to food environment research. Using two administrative-based geographic boundaries (census tracts and block groups), supermarket geographic measures (density, cumulative opportunity and distance to nearest) were created to examine differences by scale and associations between three common U.S. Census-based socioeconomic status (SES) characteristics (median household income, percentage of population living below poverty and percentage of population with at least a high school education) and a summary neighborhood SES z-score in an eight-county region of South Carolina. General linear mixed-models were used. Overall, both supermarket density and cumulative opportunity were higher when using census tract boundaries compared to block groups. In analytic models, higher median household income was significantly associated with lower neighborhood supermarket density and lower cumulative opportunity using either the census tract or block group boundaries, and neighborhood poverty was positively associated with supermarket density and cumulative opportunity. Both median household income and percent high school education were positively associated with distance to nearest supermarket using either boundary definition, whereas neighborhood poverty had an inverse association. Findings from this study support the premise that supermarket measures can differ by choice of geographic scale and can influence associations between measures. Researchers should consider the most appropriate geographic scale carefully when conducting food environment studies.

中文翻译：

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食品环境研究中的规模效应：评估南卡罗来纳州八县地区超市可达性的社会经济维度的影响

邻里尺度的选择会影响环境属性和健康相关结果之间的关联。这种现象是可修改面积单位问题的一部分，已在地理学中得到充分描述，但与食物环境研究无关。使用两个基于行政的地理边界（人口普查区和街区组），创建了超市地理测量（密度、累积机会和到最近的距离），以检查三个常见的美国基于人口普查的社会经济地位 (SES) 特征之间的规模差异和关联（家庭收入中位数、生活在贫困线以下的人口百分比和至少受过高中教育的人口百分比）以及南卡罗来纳州八县地区的汇总社区 SES z 分数。使用了一般线性混合模型。全面的，与街区组相比，使用人口普查区边界时，超市密度和累积机会都更高。在分析模型中，使用人口普查区或街区组边界，较高的家庭收入中位数与较低的邻里超市密度和较低的累积机会显着相关，而邻里贫困与超市密度和累积机会呈正相关。使用任一边界定义，家庭收入中位数和高中教育百分比均与到最近超市的距离呈正相关，而邻里贫困则呈负相关。这项研究的结果支持这样一个前提，即超市措施可能因地理范围的选择而有所不同，并且会影响措施之间的关联。