Analyzing person-place interactions during walking episodes: using an innovative ambulatory assessment approach of walking-triggered e-diaries (Preprint)
Authors: Kanning Martina , Bollenbach Lukas , Schmitz Julian , Niermann Christina , Fina Stefan 
Published: May 2022

BACKGROUND

Walking behavior is positively associated with physiological and mental health as much evidence has already shown. Walking is also becoming a critical issue for health promotion in urban environments as it is the most often used form of active mobility and helps to replace carbon dioxide emissions from motorized forms of transport. It therefore contributes to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and heat islands within cities. However, to promote walking of urban dwellers and to utilize its health enhancing potential, we need to know more about the way in which physical and social environments shape individual experiences during walking episodes. Such person-place interactions could not adequately be analyzed in former studies due to methodological constraints.

OBJECTIVE

This paper introduces walking triggered e-diaries as an innovative ambulatory assessment approach for time-varying associations and investigates its accuracy with two different validation strategies.

METHODS

The walking-trigger consists of a combination of movement-acceleration via accelerometer and mobile positioning of the cell phone via GPS and transmission towers to track walking activities. The trigger starts an e-diary whenever a movement acceleration exceeds a predetermined threshold and participant's locations are identified as non-stationary outside a predefined place of residence. Every 420 sec (+- 300 sec) repeated e-diaries were prompted as long as the trigger conditions were met. Data were assessed on 10 consecutive days. Firstly, to investigate accuracy, we reconstructed walking routes and calculated a percentage score for all triggered prompts in relation to all walking routes where a prompt could have been triggered. Then to provide data about its specificity, we used momentary self-reports and objectively assessed movement behavior to describe activity levels before the trigger prompted an e-diary.

RESULTS

Data of 67 participants could be analyzed and the walking-trigger led to 3283 e-diary prompts from which 2258 (68.8%) were answered. Concerning accuracy, the walking-trigger prompted an e-diary on 732 of 842 reconstructed walking routes (86.9%). Further, in 69.5% of the triggered e-diaries, participants self-reported that they were currently walking outside. Steps and acceleration movement was higher during these self-reported walking episodes compared to the ones participants denied being currently walking outside (steps: 106 vs. 32; g > .2 in 58.4% vs. 19%).

CONCLUSIONS

The accuracy analysis revealed that walking-triggered e-diaries are suitable to collect different data of individuals' current experiences in the very situations in which a person walks outside. Combined with environmental data, such an approach increases knowledge about person-place interactions and provides the possibility to gain knowledge about user preferences for health enhancing urban environments. From a methodological point of view, however, specificity analysis showed how changes in trigger conditions (e.g. increasing threshold for movement acceleration) leads to changes in accuracy.