Field Validation of Secondary Data Sources for Enumerating Retail Tobacco Outlets in a State without Tobacco Outlet Licensing

摘要

Identifying tobacco retail outlets for U.S. FDA compliance checks or calculating tobacco outlet is difficult in the 13 states without tobacco retail licensing or where licensing lists are unavailable for research. This study uses primary data collection to identify tobacco outlets in three counties in a non-licensing state and validate two commercial secondary data sources. We calculated sensitivity and positive predictive values (PPV) to validate the secondary data sources, and conducted a geospatial analysis to determine correct allocation to census tract. ReferenceUSA had almost perfect sensitivity (0.82) while Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) had substantial sensitivity (0.69) for identifying tobacco outlets; combined, sensitivity improved to 0.89. D&B identified fewer “false positives” with a PPV of 0.82 compared to 0.71 for ReferenceUSA. ReferenceUSA geocoded over 90% of outlets to the correct census tract. Combining two commercial data sources resulted in enumeration of nearly 90% of tobacco outlets in a three county area. Commercial databases appear to provide a reasonably accurate way to identify tobacco outlets for enforcement operations and density estimation.