Hi everyone, I'm going to use one of these two indicators in order to investigate the spatial pattern of my ward wise disease data. Which one is more appropriate and why? I need some reliable references to help me for performing them into my study.
It depends on your research question. In High/Low Clustering(Getis-Ord General G) we can measure the concentration of high or low values for a given study area. If you want to know are the values and distances are correlated, it probably is a good idea to use Spatial Autocorrelation tool.
The assumptions behind both stats are that your data is continuous (real numbers) and normally distributed in the study area.
If your research question is about measuring the similarity of nearby features you should use Moran's I. The measure only indicates that similar values occur together. It does not indicate whether any cluster is composed of high or low values.
General G statistic can be used to indicate whether high or low values are concentrated over the study area.
Hence, if you wish to find out whether your data is clustered in general (auto correlated) use Moran's I. If you want to know more specifically whether or not there are clusters of high/low values use G stat.
Moran's I is not strictly a measure of homogeneity. A certain degree of variability is required and, to disclose local pockets of spatial autocorrelation, the values must deviate markedly from the mean value (two adjacent values that are very close to the mean are also spatially clustered, but Moran's I won't detect them).
Moran's I can be expressed in terms of the local Gi* values. This is outlined in Section 4 of the 1995 paper of Ord & Getis and it shows that both measures are related to each other. While Moran's I gives you a more general indication of clustering and repulsion, Gi* is a measure of high/low value concentration. However, both are inherently linked. This is why you typically get very similar results with both techniques in terms of which spatial units are flagged significant.
For Moran's I deviation from normality is not as severe. What is more important is symmetry. See: Griffith (2010): "The Moran coefficient for non-normal data".
I hope that adds something to your question and to the other excellent answers!
A nice answer can be found here: https://www.mattpeeples.net/modules/LISA.html#:~:text=Moran's%20I%20is%20large%20and,low%20values%20cluster%20in%20space.