BEST PRACTICES - MAPPING HEALTH DATA

Working with area data - study area boundary and edge effects

Whenever a study population is defined geographically, there is potential for an ‘edge effect’. Most simply, this relates to how well the study area boundary captures the relevant population, but for some spatial statistics, it can have a significant influence on the analysis results.

Edge effects are also pervasive when interpolating point data. For example, environmental epidemiology studies of air pollution effects on health may use data from monitoring stations to interpolate an air pollution surface to use for assigning exposure levels to study subjects.

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