Quantifying the effect of area deprivation on child pedestrian casualties by using longitudinal mixed models to adjust for confounding, interference and spatial dependence

. The paper investigates the link between area-based socio-economic deprivation and the incidence of child pedestrian casualties. The analysis is conducted by using data for small spatial zones within major British cities over the period 2001-2007. Spatial longitudinal generalized linear mixed models, estimated by using frequentist and Bayesian approaches, are used to address issues of confounding, spatial dependence and transmission of deprivation effects across zones (i.e. interference). The results show a consistent strong deprivation effect across model specifications. The incidence of child pedestrian casualties in the most deprived zones is typically greater than 10 times that in the least deprived zones. Modelling interference through a spatially auto-regressive covariate uncovers a substantially larger effect.