Concepts, Characterizations, and Cautions: A Public Health Guide and Glossary for Planning Food Environment Measurement.

Abstract

There is no singular approach to measuring the food environment suitable for all studies. Understanding terminology, methodology, and common issues is crucial to choosing the best approach. This review is designed to support a shared understanding so diverse multi-institutional teams engaged in food environment measurement can justify their measurement choices and have informed discussions about reasons for measurement strategies to vary across projects. This guide defines key terms and provides annotated resources identified as a useful starting point for exploring the food environment literature. The writing team was an academic-practice collaboration, reflecting on the experience of a multi-institutional team focused on retail environments across the US relevant to cardiovascular disease. Terms and annotated resources are divided into three sections: food environment constructs, classification and measures, and errors and strategies to reduce error. Two examples of methods and challenges encountered while measuring the food environment in the context of a US health department are provided. Researchers and practice professionals are directed to the Food Environment Electronic Database Directory (https://www.foodenvironmentdirectory.com/) for comparing available data resources for food environment measurement, focused on the US; this resource incorporates updates informed by user input and literature reviews. Measuring the food environment is complex and risks oversimplification. This guide serves as a starting point but only partially captures some aspects of neighborhood food environment measurement. No single food environment measure or data source meets all research and practice objectives. This shared starting point can facilitate theoretically grounded food environment measurement.