The Perceived Living Environment instrument (PLE) aims to quantify how people perceive (the quality of) the neighbourhood they live in. The instrument comprises 9 items investigating characteristics of the living environment as perceived by the respondent. Participants are asked to characterize their neighborhood according to their own perception.

A few studies investigated the association between objective attributes of the neighborhood and the perceived neighborhood. These studies stress that perceptions of the neighborhood are complementary to objective attributes of the neighborhood and likely have an additional effect on the health of individuals ^{1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)}.