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. 2023 Jul 1;20(13):6277.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20136277.

A Systematic Review of Areal Units and Adjacency Used in Bayesian Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Conditional Autoregressive Models in Health Research

Zemenu Tadesse Tessema  1   2 , Getayeneh Antehunegn Tesema  1   2 , Susannah Ahern  1 , Arul Earnest  1
Affiliations

A Systematic Review of Areal Units and Adjacency Used in Bayesian Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Conditional Autoregressive Models in Health Research

Zemenu Tadesse Tessema et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Advancements in Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal modelling have been observed in recent years. Despite this, there are unresolved issues about the choice of appropriate spatial unit and adjacency matrix in disease mapping. There is limited systematic review evidence on this topic. This review aimed to address these problems. We searched seven databases to find published articles on this topic. A modified quality assessment tool was used to assess the quality of studies. A total of 52 studies were included, of which 26 (50.0%) were on infectious diseases, 10 (19.2%) on chronic diseases, 8 (15.5%) on maternal and child health, and 8 (15.5%) on other health-related outcomes. Only 6 studies reported the reasons for using the specified spatial unit, 8 (15.3%) studies conducted sensitivity analysis for prior selection, and 39 (75%) of the studies used Queen contiguity adjacency. This review highlights existing variation and limitations in the specification of Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal models used in health research. We found that majority of the studies failed to report the rationale for the choice of spatial units, perform sensitivity analyses on the priors, or evaluate the choice of neighbourhood adjacency, all of which can potentially affect findings in their studies.

Keywords: Bayesian; adjacency matrices; conditional autoregressive model; spatio-temporal.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of selection of studies for the systematic review using PRISMA checklists from 2012–2022.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of studies based on year of publications from 2012 to 2022.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of included articles by country of study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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