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. 2024 Aug 1;19(8):e0307272.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307272. eCollection 2024.

Using Google Street View for virtual observations of neighborhoods and dwelling units: A feasibility study

Ting Yan  1 , Xin Rosalynn Yang  2 , Hanyu Sun  1 , David Cantor  1
Affiliations

Using Google Street View for virtual observations of neighborhoods and dwelling units: A feasibility study

Ting Yan et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

In face-to-face household surveys, field interviewers are sometimes asked to make notes of characteristics of the dwelling unit on the sampled address as well as its surroundings before making contact with a household member living at the sample address. Field interviewer observations of this kind are used to improve efficiency of field data collection and to be used as nonresponse adjustment. However, field interviewer observations can be expensive and the quality of observations needs to be improved. Recently, survey organizations start to utilize Google Street View to conduct virtual observations of the dwelling unit and the neighborhood. This paper reports a feasibility study that evaluates the feasibility of using virtual observations, assesses its agreement with field interviewer observation results, and examine whether virtual observations correlate with survey response status and survey estimates. We found moderate to high agreements between virtual and interviewer observation results. We also found that some observation results are significantly related to response status and survey estimates. However, virtual observations using GSV have coverage issues, which could limit their potential use.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Availability and quality of street view images.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Examples of street view images not suitable for virtual observation.
(A) Image is partially missing. (B) Housing unit is too far to observe in detail.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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