Classification bias in commercial business lists for retail food stores in the U.S.

Euna Han, Lisa M Powell, Shannon N Zenk, Leah Rimkus, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, Frank J Chaloupka

Aspects of the food environment such as the availability of different types of food stores have recently emerged as key modifiable factors that may contribute to the increased prevalence of obesity. Given that many of these studies have derived their results based on secondary datasets and the relationship of food stores with individual weight outcomes has been reported to vary by store type, it is important to understand the extent to which often-used secondary data correctly classify food stores. We evaluated the classification bias of food stores in Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) and InfoUSA commercial business lists.