Development and reliability testing of a food store observation form.

Objective: To develop a reliable food store observational data collection instrument to be used for measuring product availability, pricing, and promotion.

Design: Observational data collection.

Setting: A total of 120 food stores (26 supermarkets, 34 grocery stores, 54 gas/convenience stores, and 6 mass merchandise stores) in the Chicago metropolitan statistical area.

Field validation of secondary commercial data sources on the retail food outlet environment in the U.S.

This study used direct field observations with interior assessments of outlets to validate food store and restaurant data from two commercial business lists conditional on classification of outlet type, including supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, full-service restaurants and fast food restaurants. The study used a stratified random sample that included 274 urban census tracts across 9 counties from the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and 46 suburban and 61 rural census tracts across 13 counties from a 50-mile buffer surrounding the MSA. Results showed that agreement between the field observations and the commercial business lists for the food store and restaurant outlets was generally moderate (ranging from fair to good).

An examination of adolescents who were and were not exposed to "Teens Stopping AIDS": reaching the hard-to-reach.

Teens Stopping AIDS (TSA) was an HIV prevention project in Sacramento, California, that involved coalitions of volunteers in designing and launching a social marketing intervention. Mounted in 15 zip codes where teen sexually transmitted disease (STD) and pregnancy rates were high, TSA delivered HIV prevention messages for one year through various communication channels (e.g.