Greenspace and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems: Limited associations in the ABCD cohort

Carly E Gray, Pooja S. Tandon, Katherine T. Foster and Lucía Magis-Weinberg
Additional contact information
Carly E Gray: Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
Katherine T. Foster: University of Washington
Lucía Magis-Weinberg: University of Washington

No 5c4k8_v1, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The availability of neighborhood greenspace has been associated with many positive health outcomes across the lifespan. However, evidence has been mixed during adolescence. This study examined associations between greenspace and internalizing and externalizing problems among adolescents ages 9-14 in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort. We tested whether associations were present or stronger at certain ages, for certain genders, or for certain indices of greenspace using a split-half approach. Analyses in the exploratory sample (N = 2,932) indicated few associations between greenspace and adolescent mental health. Preregistered analyses in the confirmatory sample (N = 3,264) replicated these largely null results. However, the proportion of park land in 13-year-old girls’ census tracts was associated with lower internalizing problems in both samples. Our findings point to the need to more precisely consider access to and interaction with greenspace, as well as other neighborhood factors affecting youth mental health.

Date: 2025-08-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/68926e280eba2a6bd5c611b5/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:5c4k8_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/5c4k8_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().