The built environment and depressive symptoms among urban youth: A spatial regression study

Abstract

This study evaluated spatial relationships between features of the built environment and youth depressive symptoms. Data used in this study came from the 2008 Boston Youth Survey Geospatial Dataset, which includes Boston high school students with complete residential information (n= 1170). Features of the built environment (such as access to walking destinations and community design features) were created for 400- and 800-m street network buffers of the youths' residences. We computed standard Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and spatial simultaneous autoregressive models. We found significant positive spatial autocorrelation in all of the built environment features at both spatial scales (all p= 0.001), depressive symptoms (p= 0.034) as well as in the OLS regression residuals (all p