Socioeconomic trends in household food expenditures: Comparing objective food shopping receipts vs. Self-reports

Studies on the association between socioeconomic factors and food purchasing behavior have tended to rely on food expenditure data obtained through participant self-reports. However, self-reported expenditures have only rarely been compared to objective measures such as store and restaurant receipts collected over a given period of time. In addition, few receipt-based studies have addressed the disparities in the purchases of healthy or unhealthy foods across different socioeconomic status (SES) groups.

The Seattle Obesity Study II (SOS II) collected store and restaurant receipts for 449 households over a period of 2 weeks. Participants were asked to report their monthly food expenditures for foods at home and away from home at the household level. The purpose of the present analyses was to: a) compare household food expenditures obtained from self-report vs. food shopping receipt data, using a number of validation techniques such as Pearson correlation, quintile kappa coefficient, and Bland-Altman method; b) examine socioeconomic trends in food expenditures using data from both methods: food shopping receipts vs. self-reports; c) to further examine SES trends in household food expenditures at home vs. away from home, as well as food groups using food shopping receipt data.

Materials Available

• Abstract

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Project Type(s): Master's Thesis

Author(s): Zhongyuan Liu

Program(s): Master of Public Health, RDN Training

Year: 2014

Adviser(s):

• Adam Drewnowski