Development of the Environmental Assessment Tool (EAT) to measure organizational physical and social support for worksite obesity prevention programs.

Objective: To describe the development, reliability, and validity of the Environmental Assessment Tool (EAT) for assessing worksite physical and social environmental support for obesity prevention.

Methods: The EAT was developed using a multistep process. Inter-rater reliability was estimated via Kappa and other measures. Concurrent and predictive validity were estimated using site-level correlations and person-level multiple regression analyses comparing EAT scores and employee absenteeism and health care expenditures.

Results: Results show high inter-rater reliability and concurrent validity for many measures and predictive validity for absenteeism expenditures.

Conclusions: The primary use of the EAT is as a physical and social environment assessment tool for worksite obesity prevention efforts. It can be used as a reliable and valid means to estimate relationships between environmental interventions and absenteeism and medical expenditures, provided those expenditures are for the same year that the EAT is administered.