Evaluating the impact of community interventions on childhood obesity in populations living in low-income households in Los Angeles: A simulation study.

Background: The complex multifactorial nature of childhood obesity makes community interventions difficult to evaluate using traditional approaches; innovative methods are needed.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of various interventions targeting childhood obesity-related behaviours, and classified as using a micro-level (e.g.

Agent-Based Models for Assessing Complex Statistical Models: An Example Evaluating Selection and Social Influence Estimates from SIENA.

Although agent-based models (ABMs) have been increasingly accepted in social sciences as a valid tool to formalize theory, propose mechanisms able to recreate regularities, and guide empirical research, we are not aware of any research using ABMs to assess the robustness of our statistical methods. We argue that ABMs can be extremely helpful to assess models when the phenomena under study are complex. As an example, we create an ABM to evaluate the estimation of selection and influence effects by SIENA, a stochastic actor-oriented model proposed by Tom A.

Point-of-sale cigarette pricing strategies and young adult smokers' intention to purchase cigarettes: an online experiment.

Background: Point-of-sale tobacco marketing has been shown to be related to tobacco use behaviours; however, specific influences of cigarette price discounts, price tiers and pack/carton availability on cigarette purchasing intention are less understood by the tobacco control community.

Methods: We conducted discrete choice experiments among an online sample of US young adult smokers (aged 18-30 years; n=1823). Participants were presented scenarios depicting their presence at a tobacco retail outlet with varying availability of cigarette price discounts, price tiers and pack/carton.