JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Unhealthy food and beverage marketing influences children’s attitudes, preferences, and behaviours toward food. Most research studies on children’s exposure to food marketing focus on single settings, media, or marketing channels, precluding cumulative estimates of food marketing exposure across children’s daily lives. Therefore, there is a need for tools to measure food marketing across settings.

Objective:

This study aimed to test the feasibility of a mobile application to assess food marketing observed by youth aged 13–17 years across settings in their daily life in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Methods:

Using a digital app, FoodMATS-Youth, 23 participants photographed food marketing they saw over three days. Each participant completed a feedback survey on usability and acceptability of the digital app assessed through a 5-score rating of feasibility outcomes. They also took part in focus groups, sharing their experiences with the app, and this data was thematically analyzed. Descriptive analyses of app-derived feasibility metrics were also conducted.

Results:

The app had high usability and acceptability based on the feasibility outcomes, app-derived feasibility metrics and focus group responses. For feasibility outcomes, app navigation had the highest rating at 4.7, similar to ease of use and app responsiveness at 4.48; convenience was the lowest rated outcome at 4.0. App-derived feasibility metrics like user compliance, response, and app completion rates were also high at 92%, 85.2% and 92%, respectively. A total of 146 photos of food marketing were submitted by participants through the app. Focus groups showed great participant satisfaction with the app’s interface and functionality.

Conclusions:

This study found that the FoodMATS-Youth mobile application is highly feasible for monitoring food marketing exposures across multiple settings (e.g. social media, grocery stores) and was well-received by our participants. The FoodMATS-Youth has the potential to efficiently improve food marketing research in Canada and internationally and generate data that can inform comprehensive food marketing policies.