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Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study
BACKGROUND: Environmental exposure assessments often require a study participant’s residential location, but the positional accuracy of geocoding varies by method and the rural status of an address. We evaluated geocoding error in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a cohort of pesticide applicator...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25292160 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-13-37 |
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author | Jones, Rena R DellaValle, Curt T Flory, Abigail R Nordan, Alex Hoppin, Jane A Hofmann, Jonathan N Chen, Honglei Giglierano, James Lynch, Charles F Beane Freeman, Laura E Rushton, Gerard Ward, Mary H |
author_facet | Jones, Rena R DellaValle, Curt T Flory, Abigail R Nordan, Alex Hoppin, Jane A Hofmann, Jonathan N Chen, Honglei Giglierano, James Lynch, Charles F Beane Freeman, Laura E Rushton, Gerard Ward, Mary H |
author_sort | Jones, Rena R |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Environmental exposure assessments often require a study participant’s residential location, but the positional accuracy of geocoding varies by method and the rural status of an address. We evaluated geocoding error in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a cohort of pesticide applicators and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina, U.S.A. METHODS: For 5,064 AHS addresses in Iowa, we compared rooftop coordinates as a gold standard to two alternate locations: 1) E911 locations (intersection of the private and public road), and 2) geocodes generated by matching addresses to a commercial street database (NAVTEQ) or placed manually. Positional error (distance in meters (m) from the rooftop) was assessed overall and separately for addresses inside (non-rural) or outside town boundaries (rural). We estimated the sensitivity and specificity of proximity-based exposures (crops, animal feeding operations (AFOs)) and the attenuation in odds ratios (ORs) for a hypothetical nested case–control study. We also evaluated geocoding errors within two AHS subcohorts in Iowa and North Carolina by comparing them to GPS points taken at residences. RESULTS: Nearly two-thirds of the addresses represented rural locations. Compared to the rooftop gold standard, E911 locations were more accurate overall than address-matched geocodes (median error 39 and 90 m, respectively). Rural addresses generally had greater error than non-rural addresses, although errors were smaller for E911 locations. For highly prevalent crops within 500 m (>97% of homes), sensitivity was >95% using both data sources; however, lower specificities with address-matched geocodes (more common for rural addresses) led to substantial attenuation of ORs (e.g., corn <500 m OR(obs) = 1.47 vs. OR(true) = 2.0). Error in the address-matched geocodes resulted in even greater OR(obs) attenuation for AFO exposures. Errors for North Carolina addresses were generally smaller than those in Iowa. CONCLUSIONS: Geocoding error can be minimized when known coordinates are available to test alternative data and methods. Our assessment suggests that where E911 locations are available, they offer an improvement upon address-matched geocodes for rural addresses. Exposure misclassification resulting from positional error is dependent on the geographic database, geocoding method, and the prevalence of exposure. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1476-072X-13-37) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4203975 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42039752014-10-22 Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study Jones, Rena R DellaValle, Curt T Flory, Abigail R Nordan, Alex Hoppin, Jane A Hofmann, Jonathan N Chen, Honglei Giglierano, James Lynch, Charles F Beane Freeman, Laura E Rushton, Gerard Ward, Mary H Int J Health Geogr Research BACKGROUND: Environmental exposure assessments often require a study participant’s residential location, but the positional accuracy of geocoding varies by method and the rural status of an address. We evaluated geocoding error in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a cohort of pesticide applicators and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina, U.S.A. METHODS: For 5,064 AHS addresses in Iowa, we compared rooftop coordinates as a gold standard to two alternate locations: 1) E911 locations (intersection of the private and public road), and 2) geocodes generated by matching addresses to a commercial street database (NAVTEQ) or placed manually. Positional error (distance in meters (m) from the rooftop) was assessed overall and separately for addresses inside (non-rural) or outside town boundaries (rural). We estimated the sensitivity and specificity of proximity-based exposures (crops, animal feeding operations (AFOs)) and the attenuation in odds ratios (ORs) for a hypothetical nested case–control study. We also evaluated geocoding errors within two AHS subcohorts in Iowa and North Carolina by comparing them to GPS points taken at residences. RESULTS: Nearly two-thirds of the addresses represented rural locations. Compared to the rooftop gold standard, E911 locations were more accurate overall than address-matched geocodes (median error 39 and 90 m, respectively). Rural addresses generally had greater error than non-rural addresses, although errors were smaller for E911 locations. For highly prevalent crops within 500 m (>97% of homes), sensitivity was >95% using both data sources; however, lower specificities with address-matched geocodes (more common for rural addresses) led to substantial attenuation of ORs (e.g., corn <500 m OR(obs) = 1.47 vs. OR(true) = 2.0). Error in the address-matched geocodes resulted in even greater OR(obs) attenuation for AFO exposures. Errors for North Carolina addresses were generally smaller than those in Iowa. CONCLUSIONS: Geocoding error can be minimized when known coordinates are available to test alternative data and methods. Our assessment suggests that where E911 locations are available, they offer an improvement upon address-matched geocodes for rural addresses. Exposure misclassification resulting from positional error is dependent on the geographic database, geocoding method, and the prevalence of exposure. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1476-072X-13-37) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2014-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4203975/ /pubmed/25292160 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-13-37 Text en © Jones et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Jones, Rena R DellaValle, Curt T Flory, Abigail R Nordan, Alex Hoppin, Jane A Hofmann, Jonathan N Chen, Honglei Giglierano, James Lynch, Charles F Beane Freeman, Laura E Rushton, Gerard Ward, Mary H Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title | Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title_full | Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title_fullStr | Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title_short | Accuracy of residential geocoding in the Agricultural Health Study |
title_sort | accuracy of residential geocoding in the agricultural health study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25292160 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-13-37 |
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