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Table 2 Polychoric correlations between each pair of area-level explanatory variables. Restricted to LSOAs contributing to the analysis (N = 740)

From: Investigating the importance of the local food environment for fruit and vegetable intake in older men and women in 20 UK towns: a cross-sectional analysis of two national cohorts using novel methods

 

Density of fast food outlets

Diversity of food retail environment

Unhealthy food marketing environment

Road quality score

Transport

Area-level income

Walkability

Population densityf

Density of shops selling fruit and vegetables

0.64

0.75

0.66

0.19

0.34

0.38

0.36

0.25

Density of fast food outlets

 

0.81

0.55

0.25

0.31

0.42

0.42

0.23

Diversity of food retail environmenta

  

0.58

0.15

0.13

0.26

0.13

−0.05

Unhealthy food marketing environmentb

   

0.12

0.24

0.24

0.24

0.21

Road quality scorec

    

0.32

0.29

0.30

0.24

Transport

     

0.29

0.59

0.59

Area-level incomed

      

0.40

0.36

Walkabilitye

       

0.83

  1. aDiversity of food retail environment calculated using a spatial entropy score taking into account four types of food premises: all food shops, restaurants and cafes, pubs and fast food restaurants
  2. bUnhealthy marketing environment defined from a count of unhealthy food and drink adverts within an area including those promoting sugary drinks, unhealthy snacks/junk food and alcohol
  3. cRoad quality score calculated from latent class analysis including 10 variables: ‘quality of pavement’; ‘lowered curbs’; ‘barriers on pavement’; ‘pavement width’; ‘pedestrian traffic’; ‘road use’; ‘road connectivity’; ‘traffic calming measures’; ‘lamp posts’ and ‘road crossings’ (full details in Additional file 1)
  4. dIncome deprivation score and crime score generated from the 2010 Index of Multiple Deprivation LSOA rank (IMD: www.gov.co.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2010) or the 2009 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation datazone rank (SIMD: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/SIMD) to define relative deprivation of an area for England and Scotland respectively
  5. eArea walkability generated from street connectivity defined as the number of road nodes/interconnections per km2 within an LSOA/datazone obtained from 2015 Ordinance Survey (Digimap Meridian 2 National)
  6. fPopulation densitiy obtained from mid-year population estimates from 2010 from the Office of National Statistics (www.ons.gov.uk) and the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics (www.sns.gov.uk). Estimates used to generate population density per km2 at the area level smoothed using a 5 km radius buffer