The application of subjective and objective method in the evaluation of healthy cities: A case study in Central China

An appropriate evaluation method plays an important role in the Healthy City plan and helps to improve urban health. Due to a lack of uniform criteria of evaluation, it's the first time to compare the feasibility and effectiveness of various methods in healthy city, including the comprehensive index method, rank-sum ratio method (RSR), entropy method, integrated RSR, and integrated entropy method. The comparison was conducted on Friedman chi-square test, Spearman correlation, consistency test, and one-way analysis of variance, with the level of 0.05 in two-sides for statistical significance. Due to a high consistency (92.90 %) with the principal component analysis and actual circumstance, the comprehensive index method was compared as a reference. Compared with the comprehensive index method, the consistency rate of RSR, entropy, integrated RSR, and integrated entropy method was separately 78.60 %, 57.10 %, 71.40 %, and 42.90 %. The Kappa value of them was respectively 0.625 (P < 0.001), 0.250 (P = 0.080), 0.500 (P < 0.001), and 0.000 (P = 1.000). Accordingly, the comprehensive index method is perceived as an appropriate approach in healthy cities evaluation, based on normative Delphi studies and less datamissing. The objective and integrated method should be used according to the requirement.