Data from an Our Voice citizen science initiative in neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status in Sweden: A proof of concept for collecting complex data

Katarina Bälter; Tove Rydenstam; Terence Fell; Abby C King; Benti Geleta Buli

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2020.106394

Data from an Our Voice citizen science initiative in neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status in Sweden: A proof of concept for collecting complex data

Data Brief. 2020 Oct 9:33:106394. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2020.106394. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Authors

Katarina Bälter^{1

2}, Tove Rydenstam¹, Terence Fell³, Abby C King^{4

5}, Benti Geleta Buli¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Public Health Sciences, Mälardalen University, Box 883, Västerås 721 23, Sweden.
² Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
³ Division of Political Science, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵ Stanford Prevention Research Center, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.

Abstract

This data article describes data from an Our Voice citizen science data collection aiming at identifying elements that facilitate or hinder physical activity among adolescents in a medium sized city in Sweden. Twenty-four adolescents from two neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status in Sweden used the Stanford Healthy Neighborhood Discovery Tool app on their phones to take photographs and record audio narratives of aspects of their neighborhood that they perceived as facilitating or hindering their physically activity. In total, 186 photos of the neighborhood elements were taken by the adolescents and thereafter the research group categorized the photos into a final set of 16 elements of which 12 described the built environment and 4 the social environment. The data collection included the combination of the following data collected using the app: photographs, geocoded data of where the photographs were taken, recorded narratives describing the photographs, positive and negative neighborhood attributes (portrayed as a happy or sad "smiley face"), and an 8-item survey. In addition, we used official statistics from the City of Västerås describing the two neighborhoods as well as the whole city. This data article is associated with the article titled "Using citizen science to understand the prerequisites for physical activity among adolescents in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods - the NESLA study" [1].

Keywords: Adolescents; Built environment; Citizen science; Our Voice; Physical activity; Social environment; Socioeconomic status.