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Abstract

Background: It has been observed that eating is influenced by the presence and availability of food. Being aware of the presence of food in the environment may enable mobile health (mHealth) apps to use geofencing techniques to determine the most appropriate time to proactively deliver interventions. To date, however, studies on eating typically rely on self-reports of environmental contexts, which may not be accurate or feasible for issuing mHealth interventions. Objective: This study aimed to compare the subjective and geographic information system (GIS) assessments of the momentary food environment to explore the feasibility of using GIS data to predict eating behavior and inform geofenced interventions. Methods: In total, 72 participants recorded their food intake in real-time for 14 days using an ecological momentary assessment approach. Participants logged their food intake and responded to approximately 5 randomly timed assessments each day. During each assessment, the participants reported the number and type of food outlets nearby. Their electronic diaries simultaneously recorded their GPS coordinates. The GPS data were later overlaid with a GIS map of food outlets to produce an objective count of the number of food outlets within 50 m of the participant. Results: Correlations between self-reported and GIS counts of food outlets within 50 m were only of a small size (r=0.17; PP=.41). However, there was a significant difference between the GIS-derived and self-reported counts of food outlets and the self-reported type of food outlets (AUC-ROC self-reported outlet type=0.56, SE 0.01; P Conclusions: The subjective food environment appears to predict eating better than objectively measured food environments via GIS. mHealth apps may need to consider the type of food outlets rather than the raw number of outlets in an individual's environment.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Elliston, KG and Schuz, B and Albion, T and Ferguson, SG
Keywords:	obesity, GIS, EMA, behaviour change, ecological momentary assessment, food intake, geographic information systems, mHealth, mobile phone
Journal or Publication Title:	JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Publisher:	J M I R Publications, Inc.
ISSN:	2291-5222
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.2196/15948
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2020 Katherine G. Elliston, Benjamin Schuz, Tim Albion, Stuart G. Ferguson. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Ferguson, SG UTAS Profile: Ferguson, SG
Item Statistics:	View statistics for this item

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