From: Geographical classifications to guide rural health policy in Australia
Important characteristics | Decisions required - sources of subjectivity |
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Be clear on specific objectives and purpose of the classification as this determines what is being measured | Is it remoteness, isolation, access, disadvantage, rurality or something else? If it is an access classification, then what aspect of access is being measured, and in relation to what service - (e.g. GPs as a measure of primary care) |
The choice of algorithm or procedure for grouping similar clusters matters | Accessibility can be measured by distance to nearest service, service provider to population ratios, or increasingly sophisticated methods such as floating catchments and distance-decay |
The criteria and cut-off points underpinning groups matters | How many groups do you want? At what point do you differentiate between groups? (e.g. Is the decision based on minimising within-group and maximising between- group variance, or is the number arbitrarily defined by convenience for the end-user?) |
The choice of spatial units matters | RRMA is often criticised for its use of Statistical Local Areas (which can be large in rural areas), but the more extreme use of 1 km grids such as ASGC-RA is typically not an option for most data required. |