American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on September 12, 2006
American Journal of Epidemiology 2006 164(9):835-840; doi:10.1093/aje/kwj314
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American Journal of Epidemiology Copyright © 2006 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health All rights reserved; printed in U.S.A.
Invited Commentary |
Invited Commentary: Using Area-based Socioeconomic Measures—Think Conceptually, Act Cautiously
From the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Correspondence to Dr. Arline Geronimus, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 109 South Observatory Street, M5073 SPH II, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029 (e-mail: arline@umich.edu).
Received for publication March 20, 2006. Accepted for publication April 5, 2006.
Abbreviations: ABSM, area-based socioeconomic measure
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INTRODUCTION |
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Investigators dedicated to understanding social inequalities in health in the United States face major challenges. Key among them are data constraints, limitations in theory development, and disciplinary divides. A central data concern is that many data sets do not include adequate health and socioeconomic information. Growing conceptual interest in contextual influences on health leads some investigators to link census to health data in order to use area-based socioeconomic measures (ABSMs) to estimate contextual effects (1
). When data permit, both microlevel socioeconomic variables and ABSMs are included in multilevel models to estimate area impacts on health above and beyond the characteristics of individuals (2). However, investigators have also used ABSMs to substitute for missing microlevel information, raising the difficult question of how well these aggregate variables serve to proxy individual characteristics.
Investigators of this question have often warned of the dangers of making inferences about individual-level relations from aggregate-level
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DO ABSMs RELIABLY YIELD COMPARABLE OR CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATES TO ABSENT MICROLEVEL DATA? |
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"APTLY" CHOSEN ABSMs |
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ABSMs: A "ONE SIZE FITS ALL" SOLUTION? |
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Conclusion |
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APPENDIX A |
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APPENDIX B |
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Related articles in Am. J. Epidemiol.:
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