Neighborhood Environment and Health-Related Quality of Life: Analysis Using the Japanese General Social Surveys

Abstract

An increasing body of literature has focused on neighborhood environments as one of the factors that determine health. Nevertheless, the research that has been conducted in Japan in this regard and that at a national scale have been very limited. In this study, statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether health-related quality of life (HRQOL) correlates with particular characteristics of the neighborhoods that people live in. Multilevel analysis was applied to data from the Japanese General Social Surveys of 2010 (n=2,326) to examine the associations of the three composite scales of HRQOL (SF-12) with both perceived and objective measurements of neighborhood environments. The results indicate that respondents who expressed positive perceptions of their neighborhood were more likely to have better levels of HRQOL. However, the objective measures of neighborhood environments were not independently associated with HRQOL, which indicates that the connections between health and place of residence are fairly complex.