Preferred reporting items in green space health research. Guiding principles for an interdisciplinary field.
Marcel Cardinali, Mariëlle A. Beenackers, Arjan van Timmeren, Uta Pottgiesser
Abstract
The relationship between green spaces and health is attracting more and more societal and research interest. The research field is however still suffering from its differing monodisciplinary origins. Now in a multidisciplinary environment on its way to a truly interdisciplinary field, there is a need for a common understanding, precision in green space indicators, and coherent assessment of the complexity of daily living environments. In several reviews, common protocols and open-source scripts are considered a high priority to advance the field. Realizing these issues, we developed PRIGSHARE (Preferred Reporting Items in Greenspace Health Research). It is accompanied by an open-source script that supports non-spatial disciplines in assessing greenness and green space on different scales and types. The PRIGSHARE checklist contains 21 items that have been identified as a risk of bias and are necessary for understanding and comparison of studies. The checklist is divided into the following topics: objectives (3 items), scope (3 items), spatial assessment (7 items), vegetation assessment (4 items), and context assessment (4 items). For each item, we include a pathway-specific (if relevant) rationale and explanation. The PRIGSHARE guiding principles should be helpful to support a high-quality assessment and synchronize the studies in the field while acknowledging the diversity of study designs.