On Dec 7, 2016, at 6:21 AM, Mindell, Jenny <j.mindell@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

Apart from my response yesterday, here are responses to Andy.
The title is deliberate and relates to the points I made yesterday.
The health effects are, as Andy says, predominantly due to physical activity and also depend on the mode these transit journeys replace -or trips not made. One study isn't generalisable but it is a good reminder to examine assumptions, such as Public transportation always increasing PA levels (not that anyone on this list believes in never or always, of course).
However, the average and range of the lengths of the journeys made, and the other options available, probably vary widely not only between countries but also within countries. London has far more buses and metro lines than anywhere else in the UK.
I am delighted that this paper is resulting in such widespread discussion!
We haven't published any Letters to the Editor yet, because we haven't received any. Feel free to submit one but perhaps take into account my comments?
Regards
Jenny

Sent from my Sony Xperia™ smartphone

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short' (mbrenman001@comcast.net)
   2. Re: Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short' (Sheryl Gross-Glaser)
   3. Re: Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short' (Andrew Dannenberg)
   4. Re: Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short' (ivanovb)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 15:23:52 +0000 (UTC)
From: mbrenman001@comcast.net
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short'
To: "" <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>, "" <thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch>
Message-ID:
        <714127607.69767909.1480605832200.JavaMail.zimbra@comcast.net>
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 10:43:29 -0500
From: Sheryl Gross-Glaser <grossglaser@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short'
To: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>
Message-ID:
        <CAPkg-15cpiXW2xMgh5-5FxX_uJFBiHv-E7e3CBGThSU4SrKK5g@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Maybe we can match height of riders with need for petite clothing - a
business opportunity. My petite daughters would appreciate that.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:23 AM, <mbrenman001@comcast.net> wrote:

> What is "the power of large sample"? And of course correlation is not
> causality. One can imagine that in the us, transit riders are shorter than
> car driver s, because of ethnic difference s in users. And there have been
> various studies showing a correlation between height and higher pay, partly
> due to gender disparities.
> Marc brenman
>
>
> Sent from XFINITY Connect Mobile App
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch
> To: h+t--friends@chrispy.net
> Cc:
> Sent: 2016-12-01 6:48:32 AM
> Subject: [H+T--Friends] Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short'
>
> this may have some value for a journal club - I see flaws at various
> levels. How it may contribute to our understanding of any possible
> relationship between  public transport and health escapes me.
>
>
>
> Thomas G?tschi, PhD
>
> ************************************************************
> *************************
> Regelm?ssig in Z?rich unterwegs?
> Hier f?r PASTA registrieren: https://survey.pastaproject.eu/zurich
> ************************************************************
> *************************
> _____________________________________________________________
> Universit?t Z?rich
> Bewegung und Gesundheit / Physical Activity and Health
>
> Institut f?r Epidemiologie, Biostatistik und Pr?vention
>
> (eh. Institut f?r Sozial- und Pr?ventivmedizin)
>
> Seilergraben 49
>
> CH-8001 Z?rich
> Schweiz
>
> Tel: +41 44 634 50 68 <+41%2044%20634%2050%2068>
> Email: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch
> www.ebpi.uzh.ch
> _____________________________________________________________
>
> [image: Inactive hide details for Ann Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34
> PM---I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's bl]Ann
> Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34 PM---I'm not sure how many on this list
> follow David Levinson's blog The Transportist (over here:  https:
>
> Von: Ann Hartell <ahartell@gmail.com>
> An: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>
> Datum: 12/01/2016 12:14 PM
> Betreff: [H+T--Friends] 'Transit Makes You Short'
> Gesendet von: h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blog The
> Transportist (over here:  *https://transportist.org/*
> <https://transportist.org/> ), but he recently published a post about a
> working paper he co-authored with Alireza Emragun titled  "Transit Makes
> you Short": On Health Impact Assessment of Transportation and the Built
> Environment.
>
> The blog post is here:
>
> *https://transportist.org/2016/11/28/u-study-says-transit-does-not-have-impact-on-public-health/*
> <https://transportist.org/2016/11/28/u-study-says-transit-does-not-have-impact-on-public-health/>
>
> The full paper is here:
> *http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/179812*
> <http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/179812>
>
> Abstract:
> The current research provides a test framework to understand whether and
> to what extent increasing public transit use and accessibility by transit
> affect health. To this end, the effect of transit mode share and
> accessibility by transit on general health, body mass index, and height are
> investigated, while controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and
> physical activity factors. The coefficient-p-value-sample-size chart is
> created and effect size analysis are conducted to explore whether the
> transit use is practically significant. Building on the results of the
> analysis, we found that the transit mode share and accessibility by transit
> are not practically significant, and the power of large-sample
> misrepresents the effect of transit on public health. The results, also,
> highlight the importance of data and variable selection by portraying a
> significant correlation between transit use and height in a multivariate
> regression analysis. What becomes clear from this study is that in spite of
> the mushrooming interdisciplinary studies in the nexus of transportation
> and health arena, researchers often propose short- and long-term policies
> blindly, while failing to report the inherent explanatory power of
> variables. We show that there is a thin line between false positive and
> true negative results. From the weakness of p-values perspective, further,
> we strove to alert both researchers and practitioners to the dangerous
> pitfall deriving from the power of large- samples. Building the results on
> just significance and sign of the parameter of interest is worthless,
> unless the magnitude of effect size is carefully quantified post analysis.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Ann Hartell
> Doctoral Candidate
> Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development
> Wirtschaftsuniversit?t Wien/Vienna University of Economics and Business
> *https://www.wu.ac.at/en/mlgd/* <http://www.wu.ac.at/mlgd/en/>
>
> Personal: *annhartell.com* <http://annhartell.com/>
> Email: *ahartell@gmail.com* <ahartell@gmail.com>_____
> __________________________________________
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 07:49:20 -0800
From: "Andrew Dannenberg" <adannenberg2@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short'
To: "'TRB Health and Transportation'" <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>,
        <thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch>
Message-ID: <01cc01d24cb3$a6236480$f26a2d80$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Unclear why this paper is receiving so much attention when it has numerous weaknesses such as:

?             The title  "Transit makes you short" is misleading, because it suggests causation between transit and height, yet one of the critical messages (somewhat buried in the paper) is that association and causation are not the same.

?             The authors correctly cite a number of studies that found an association between transit and health. Then they describe an opposing viewpoint, for which there is little evidence, suggesting that transit could be unfavorable toward health. They cite one study from London in which young adults given free bus passes substituted transit use for walking and biking. This study is not generalizable because it examines free bus passes rather than usual paid transit use found in most cities, and it studies only one age group.

?             Another reason to think that transit is unlikely to substitute for walking and biking is that most walking trips are less than half a mile and bike trips are commonly less than 2 miles.  Transit trips are usually at least several miles, so one would expect transit to rarely substitute for walking and biking.  Transit is unlikely to be a substitute for short distance walking and biking because transit involves a waiting time; often for a short trip it becomes faster to walk or bike then to wait for the transit. Also for short trips it is probably infrequent the transit goes from exactly the origin and destination that are needed. 

?             The strongest claim for an association between health and transit relates to transit and physical activity, because most transit trips begin and/or end with walking.  Whether transit can be shown to have an effect on overall health or on body mass index is less important, because general health status and body mass index are due to many  factors, not just physical activity.  A documented increase in physical activity from transit is a sufficient public health reason to encourage transit use.

              

 

From: h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of mbrenman001@comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 7:24 AM
To: h+t--friends@chrispy.net; thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short'

 

What is "the power of large sample"? And of course correlation is not causality. One can imagine that in the us, transit riders are shorter than car driver s, because of ethnic difference s in users. And there have been various studies showing a correlation between height and higher pay, partly due to gender disparities.
Marc brenman


Sent from XFINITY Connect Mobile App


-----Original Message-----

From: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch
To: h+t--friends@chrispy.net
Cc:
Sent: 2016-12-01 6:48:32 AM
Subject: [H+T--Friends] Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short'

this may have some value for a journal club - I see flaws at various levels. How it may contribute to our understanding of any possible relationship between  public transport and health escapes me.



Thomas G?tschi, PhD

*************************************************************************************
Regelm?ssig in Z?rich unterwegs?
Hier f?r PASTA registrieren: https://survey.pastaproject.eu/zurich
*************************************************************************************
_____________________________________________________________
Universit?t Z?rich
Bewegung und Gesundheit / Physical Activity and Health                              
Institut f?r Epidemiologie, Biostatistik und Pr?vention                               
(eh. Institut f?r Sozial- und Pr?ventivmedizin)                                              
Seilergraben 49                                                                                               
CH-8001 Z?rich
Schweiz                                                

Tel: +41 44 634 50 68
Email: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch
www.ebpi.uzh.ch
_____________________________________________________________

Inactive hide details for Ann Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34 PM---I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blAnn Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34 PM---I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blog The Transportist (over here:  https:

Von: Ann Hartell <ahartell@gmail.com>
An: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>
Datum: 12/01/2016 12:14 PM
Betreff: [H+T--Friends] 'Transit Makes You Short'
Gesendet von: h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net

  _____ 




I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blog The Transportist (over here:  https://transportist.org/ ), but he recently published a post about a working paper he co-authored with Alireza Emragun titled  "Transit Makes you Short": On Health Impact Assessment of Transportation and the Built Environment.

The blog post is here:
https://transportist.org/2016/11/28/u-study-says-transit-does-not-have-impact-on-public-health/

The full paper is here:
http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/179812

Abstract:
The current research provides a test framework to understand whether and to what extent increasing public transit use and accessibility by transit affect health. To this end, the effect of transit mode share and accessibility by transit on general health, body mass index, and height are investigated, while controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and physical activity factors. The coefficient-p-value-sample-size chart is created and effect size analysis are conducted to explore whether the transit use is practically significant. Building on the results of the analysis, we found that the transit mode share and accessibility by transit are not practically significant, and the power of large-sample misrepresents the effect of transit on public health. The results, also, highlight the importance of data and variable selection by portraying a significant correlation between transit use and height in a multivariate regression analysis. What becomes clear from this study is that!
  in spite of the mushrooming interdisciplinary studies in the nexus of transportation and health arena, researchers often propose short- and long-term policies blindly, while failing to report the inherent explanatory power of variables. We show that there is a thin line between false positive and true negative results. From the weakness of p-values perspective, further, we strove to alert both researchers and practitioners to the dangerous pitfall deriving from the power of large- samples. Building the results on just significance and sign of the parameter of interest is worthless, unless the magnitude of effect size is carefully quantified post analysis.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ann Hartell
Doctoral Candidate
Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development
Wirtschaftsuniversit?t Wien/Vienna University of Economics and Business
https://www.wu.ac.at/en/mlgd/ <http://www.wu.ac.at/mlgd/en/>

Personal: annhartell.com <http://annhartell.com/>
Email:  <mailto:ahartell@gmail.com> ahartell@gmail.com_______________________________________________
H+T--Friends mailing list
H+T--Friends@chrispy.net
https://www.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends

_______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends@chrispy.net https://www.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends

 

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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 16:14:19 +0000
From: ivanovb <ivanovb@uw.edu>
Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Antwort:  'Transit Makes You Short'
To: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net>
Message-ID: <85281D79-E788-46BE-A75A-D43F9A1DD47E@uw.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Why is shorter bad?

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 2, 2016, at 7:34 AM, "mbrenman001@comcast.net<mailto:mbrenman001@comcast.net>" <mbrenman001@comcast.net<mailto:mbrenman001@comcast.net>> wrote:

What is "the power of large sample"? And of course correlation is not causality. One can imagine that in the us, transit riders are shorter than car driver s, because of ethnic difference s in users. And there have been various studies showing a correlation between height and higher pay, partly due to gender disparities.
Marc brenman


Sent from XFINITY Connect Mobile App


-----Original Message-----

From: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch<mailto:thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch>
To: h+t--friends@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends@chrispy.net>
Cc:
Sent: 2016-12-01 6:48:32 AM
Subject: [H+T--Friends] Antwort: 'Transit Makes You Short'


this may have some value for a journal club - I see flaws at various levels. How it may contribute to our understanding of any possible relationship between  public transport and health escapes me.



Thomas G?tschi, PhD

*************************************************************************************
Regelm?ssig in Z?rich unterwegs?
Hier f?r PASTA registrieren: https://survey.pastaproject.eu/zurich
*************************************************************************************
_____________________________________________________________
Universit?t Z?rich
Bewegung und Gesundheit / Physical Activity and Health
Institut f?r Epidemiologie, Biostatistik und Pr?vention
(eh. Institut f?r Sozial- und Pr?ventivmedizin)
Seilergraben 49
CH-8001 Z?rich
Schweiz

Tel: +41 44 634 50 68
Email: thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch<mailto:thomas.goetschi@uzh.ch>
www.ebpi.uzh.ch<http://www.ebpi.uzh.ch>
_____________________________________________________________

[Inactive hide details for Ann Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34 PM---I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's bl]Ann Hartell ---12/01/2016 12:14:34 PM---I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blog The Transportist (over here:  https:

Von: Ann Hartell <ahartell@gmail.com<mailto:ahartell@gmail.com>>
An: TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends@chrispy.net>>
Datum: 12/01/2016 12:14 PM
Betreff: [H+T--Friends] 'Transit Makes You Short'
Gesendet von: h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net<mailto:h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net>

________________________________



I'm not sure how many on this list follow David Levinson's blog The Transportist (over here:  https://transportist.org/ ), but he recently published a post about a working paper he co-authored with Alireza Emragun titled  "Transit Makes you Short": On Health Impact Assessment of Transportation and the Built Environment.

The blog post is here:
https://transportist.org/2016/11/28/u-study-says-transit-does-not-have-impact-on-public-health/

The full paper is here:
http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/179812

Abstract:
The current research provides a test framework to understand whether and to what extent increasing public transit use and accessibility by transit affect health. To this end, the effect of transit mode share and accessibility by transit on general health, body mass index, and height are investigated, while controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and physical activity factors. The coefficient-p-value-sample-size chart is created and effect size analysis are conducted to explore whether the transit use is practically significant. Building on the results of the analysis, we found that the transit mode share and accessibility by transit are not practically significant, and the power of large-sample misrepresents the effect of transit on public health. The results, also, highlight the importance of data and variable selection by portraying a significant correlation between transit use and height in a multivariate regression analysis. What becomes clear from this study is that!
  in spite of the mushrooming interdisciplinary studies in the nexus of transportation and health arena, researchers often propose short- and long-term policies blindly, while failing to report the inherent explanatory power of variables. We show that there is a thin line between false positive and true negative results. From the weakness of p-values perspective, further, we strove to alert both researchers and practitioners to the dangerous pitfall deriving from the power of large- samples. Building the results on just significance and sign of the parameter of interest is worthless, unless the magnitude of effect size is carefully quantified post analysis.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ann Hartell
Doctoral Candidate
Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development
Wirtschaftsuniversit?t Wien/Vienna University of Economics and Business
https://www.wu.ac.at/en/mlgd/<http://www.wu.ac.at/mlgd/en/>

Personal: annhartell.com<http://annhartell.com/>
Email: ahartell@gmail.com<mailto:ahartell@gmail.com>_______________________________________________
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