Measuring community integration using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and participatory mapping for people who were once homeless

Abstract

Measures of community integration rely on self-report assessments that often quantify physical or social participation, but fail to capture the individual׳s spatial presence in the community. The current study documents the activity space, or area of daily experiences, of 37 individuals who were once homeless through participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Contrary to expectations, there was no significant relationship between activity space size and community integration measures, except a negative association with physical integration. Further analysis revealed, however, that continued use of homeless services, geographically spread throughout the city, was associated with larger activity space size, but may be counterproductive to social and psychological integration efforts. Analysis of the types of locations identified revealed high importance given to leisure locations and ongoing involvement with medical and mental health locations. Finally, community integration outcomes did not differ significantly by demographics or housing type, but rather degree of family involvement and feeling like home, factors that may have more potential for change.

Feasibility and Validity of Geographically Explicit Ecological Momentary Assessment With Recall‐Aided Space‐Time Budgets

“…These stationary periods are determined by applying a convex hull detection algorithm to the raw GPS data. Convex hull methods have been used recently in several community detection and activity space projects (Chan, Helfrich, Hursh, Sally Rogers, & Gopal, ; Yin et al., ). This algorithm iteratively creates a minimum bounding polygon, or the smallest convex subset of the real plane containing the set of coordinates.…”

Using participatory mapping and a participatory geographic information system in pastoral land use investigation: Impacts of rangeland policy in Botswana

“…Using a cognitive mapping process (Chan et al, 2014), we utilised sketch maps drawn by respondents during the focus groups to determine grazing areas and the spatial extent and patterns of seasonal livestock mobility before and after fences. Participatory mapping can form an important aspect of generating local spatial knowledge (Chapin et al, 2005, Neitschman, 1995, since it allows resource users to convey not only positions of activities but also background details concerning the locations and drivers of land use activities (Levine and Feinholz, 2015).…”

Understanding perceptions of community participation in persons with severe mental illness: A mixed-methods approach

“…[16][17][18][19] While this approach provides a strong indication of the direction of a person's activities within their proximal community, outlier activity points can lead to an overestimation of the size of activity space. [20][21][22][23][24] To address this problem, the current study used a mean circle approach. 17,19 The mean circle method represents one of the earlier attempts to define areas of importance based on the presence of point or line phenomena.…”

“…In their 2012 study, Boscoe et al 23 observed a close correlation (r 2 > 0.9) in comparing Euclidean and network distances for travel times between community hospitals and sample point locations. Chan et al 24 have compounded on the earlier work of Boscoe et al 23 in the use of Euclidean distance measures in finding proximities of study participants' homes to community features. Last, an outlier analysis was conducted to identify activity points that did not fall within a participant's normal activity space.…”