Urbanisation, urbanicity, and health: a systematic review of the reliability and validity of urbanicity scales

BMC Public Health

Table 3 Ratings for each of the scales included in the review

Scale name	Quality score* (out of 5)	Followed an a priori explicit theoretical framework	Reported efforts towards content validation	Reliability scores above 0.7	At least 75% of the Hypotheses regarding relation-ships with the construct under consideration were confirmed?	Conceptual dimensional structure was supported by means of factor analysis?
Adapted scale from Dahly and Adair 2007 (Allender 2011) [8]	2 - poor	+	-	-	+	-
Adopted the NUTS framework to measure urbanisation (Vavken et al. 2011) [35]	1 - poor	-	-	-	+	-
Urbanicity scale (Jones et al. 2010) [34]	4 - high	-	+	+	+	+
Urbanicity scale developed by Mendes and Popkin 2005 (Antai et al. 2010) [37]	1 - poor	-	-	-	+	-
Urbanicity index (Van de Poel 2012) [20]	2 - poor	-	-	-	+	+
Adaptation of Dahly and Adair scale (Allender et al. 2010) [19]	3 - medium	-	+	+	+	-
Multi-component urbanicity scale for Metro Cebu (Dahly and Adair2007) [3]	3 - medium	-	+	+	+	-
Factor analysis as a tool to measure urbanization (McDade and Adair 2001) [4]	2 - poor	-	-	-	+	+
Urbanization index (Liu et al. 2003) [36]	1 - poor	-	-	-	+	-
Urbanicity index (Van de Poel 2009) [17]	2 - poor	-	-	-	+	+

– not assessed + assessed and positive result; *Quality Score calculated by assigning 1 point for each criteria listed as present (‘+’); Quality ranking: ≤2 = poor quality; 3 = medium quality; ≥ 4 = high quality.

ISSN: 1471-2458