Use of an environmental assessment tool to measure organizational physical and social support for worksite obesity prevention programs

Healthy People 2010 goals emphasize the worksite as an important setting for introducing environmental changes aimed at reducing the incidence of obesity. The Environmental Assessment Tool (EAT) was developed to measure physical and social environmental supports of an obesity prevention intervention. This presentation summarizes reliability and validity data obtained through the use of this instrument in a large-scale worksite weight management intervention. The EAT was developed using a multistep process that included a literature review, prototype development, pilot study, and tool refinement. A 100-point scoring system was developed to allow for quantitative comparisons of environmental supports across treatment sites and to monitor changes over time. Inter-rater reliability was estimated via Kappa and other measures. Concurrent and predictive validity were estimated using site-level correlations and person-level multiple regression analyses comparing EAT scores to employee absenteeism and health care expenditures. Results show high inter-rater reliability and concurrent validity for many measures and predictive validity for absenteeism expenditures. The reliability of the EAT indicates that its data collection procedures relating to assessing the physical and social environments of a worksite are clear and that it can reliably be used by researchers and practitioners in these settings. The validity results indicate that researchers and practitioners can use the EAT to assess the relationships between environmental interventions and absenteeism and medical expenditures, provided those expenditures are for the same year that the EAT is administered. Practical recommendations are offered related to maximizing the use of this and other environmental assessment tools in worksite settings.