title: Assessing the validity of a survey of the restaurant health promotion environment.
abstract: Our primary question was whether a telephone survey of restaurant personnel could provide accurate community-level measures of the restaurant health promotion environment. An obvious concern was that restaurant personnel might exaggerate the extent to which their establishment had a positive health promotion environment. Comparison with the most obvious "gold standard"--direct observation--showed fairly accurate reporting about nonsmoking seating arrangements, but restaurant personnel exaggerated the extent to which menu items were designated as low in fat. We also compared the restaurant-survey measures of nonsmoking seating availability at the community level with measures of the restrictiveness of local no-smoking ordinances. We found a positive relationship, as expected, between measures of the restrictiveness of ordinances and the amount of nonsmoking seating indicated by the restaurant survey.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
authors.forename: A D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Cheadle
authors.forename: B M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Psaty
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Curry
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Diehr
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Koepsell
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Kristal
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Patrick
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012147:Restaurants / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards*; D012907:Smoking / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014861:Washington