Merging survey and spatial data using GIS-enabled analysis and modelling

Understanding the spatial patterns of human interaction and engagement with the environmental context or situational setting in which that occurs is critical in spatially integrated social science research. Often attitudinal and behavioural research adopts a non-spatial approach to understanding the hidden behavioural patterns and response sets using questionnaire based surveys. Exclusion of the situational context where a perceptual response or behavioural outcome is elicited could mean that only a partial story will be told. Thus, the integration of unit record survey-based data with spatial data that capture and characterize the locational context of the behaviours on which data are typically collected in a social survey is an important topic for spatially integrated social science research.