Creation of a mobile-phone application for assessing supermarket offerings for a Guatemalan-based exploration of the Nutrient Environment Measurement Survey-Stores (255.1)

Background: Consumer nutrition environment measures are important to understanding the food environment, which affects individual diet. A paper version of the nutrition environment measures survey for supermarkets (NEMS-S) was modified for use in Guatemala. However, a paper survey is not an inconspicuous data collection method and is not well equipped for multiple languages in the same version. Objective: To design, pilot test, and validate the paper NEMS-S for Guatemala in the form of a mobile phone application (mobile app). Methods: CommCare, a free and open-source software application, was used to design the NEMS-S for Guatemala in the form of a mobile app. Two raters tested the mobile app in one Guatemalan supermarket. Both the inter-rater and test-retest reliability of the mobile app was determined using percent agreement and Cohen’s Kappa score; and compared to the paper version. Results: The inter-rater reliability was very high between the paper survey and the mobile app (Cohen’s kappa > 0.90). Te...