[Analysis of the characteristics of door-to-door advertising sent by supermarkets in the Principality of Asturias (Spain): a cross-sectional study].

BACKGROUND: To analyze which foods and beverages, frequently included in advertising mail delivered by supermarkets in the Principality of Asturias, can be considered essential for consumption by the population, as well as to compare their price with that of essential products. METHODS: Cross-sectional, descriptive study of supermarket sales circulars delivered to seven homes in Asturias (Spain) by four supermarket chains from July to December 2018. Type of product, its classification as essential or non-essential and mean price of the advertised product were registered. RESULTS: The study identified 14,314 products, mostly belonging to the categories: "cakes, pastries, chocolate, sugar, and sweeteners" (15.3?%), "milk and milk derivatives" (9.7?%), "processed meats".and "alcoholic beverages" (8.9?% each) and "ready-made" (8.4?%). Products considered to be non-essential were found to predominate (61.9?%). Significant differences in product type were observed between supermarket chains. Essential products had a lower mean price than the non-essential products, both overall and for each supermarket chain, and was significantly lower for one of them. . CONCLUSIONS: Products which are non-essential from the point of view of health, such as sugar-rich products, processed meats, and alcoholic beverages, dominated the advertising mail delivered door-to-door by supermarkets in the Principality of Asturias. On a positive note, the prices of essential products, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, were, on average, significantly lower than the prices of non-essential products.

Spanish adaptation and validation of the Mobile Application Rating Scale questionnaire.

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: In recent years, numerous health-related apps have appeared on the market, and assessing their quality has become crucial. A very popular tool worldwide, created especially for this purpose, is the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS). However, there are no similar tools in Spanish. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to adapt MARS to the Spanish language and validate the resultant version. METHOD: The design consists of three processes: cross-cultural adaptation, translation, and metric evaluation. 46 mobile applications, 23 of which were for Apple telephones and 23 of which were for telephones running Android, were included in the study. The main objective of these applications was to promote physical activity. The internal factor structure and reliability of MARS were examined. RESULTS: No major differences were observed in the two Spanish translations, which were carried out independently. The blind back-translation, reviewed by the original author of MARS, suggested minor edits. Discrimination indices (item-scale correlation) obtained appropriate results for both raters. The reliability of the scores was found to be appropriate both in terms of internal consistency (α > 0.77), temporal stability (r > 0.72), and inter-rater reliability (IC > 0.76). The correlations between the subscales have shown high values with range between 0.47 and 0.83. CONCLUSION: The Spanish version of MARS was shown to have appropriate metric properties to assess the quality of health apps.