Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
Volume 49, Issue 4, Pages E23-E33Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2015.04.036
Keywords
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative [2011-68001-30049]
- USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture [2007-55215-17924]
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of NIH [R01ES014240]
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Introduction: The community food environment may contribute to obesity by influencing food choice. Store and restaurant audits are increasingly common methods for assessing food environments, but are time consuming and costly. A valid, reliable brief measurement tool is needed. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate reduced-item food environment audit tools for stores and restaurants. Methods: Nutrition Environment Measures Surveys for stores (NEMS-S) and restaurants (NEMS-R) were completed in 820 stores and 1,795 restaurants in West Virginia, San Diego, and Seattle. Data mining techniques (correlation-based feature selection and linear regression) were used to identify survey items highly correlated to total survey scores and produce reduced-item audit tools that were subsequently validated against full NEMS surveys. Regression coefficients were used as weights that were applied to reduced-item tool items to generate comparable scores to full NEMS surveys. Data were collected and analyzed in 2008-2013. Results: The reduced-item tools included eight items for grocery, ten for convenience, seven for variety, and five for other stores; and 16 items for sit-down, 14 for fast casual, 19 for fast food, and 13 for specialty restaurants-10% of the full NEMS-S and 25% of the full NEMS-R. There were no significant differences in median scores for varying types of retail food outlets when compared to the full survey scores. Median in-store audit time was reduced 25%-50%. Conclusions: Reduced-item audit tools can reduce the burden and complexity of large-scale or repeated assessments of the retail food environment without compromising measurement quality. (C) 2015 American Journal of Preventive Medicine
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