Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK.
Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK.
Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2023 Jun 20;20(1):73. doi: 10.1186/s12966-023-01448-8.
Supermarkets are the primary source of food for many people yet their full potential as a setting to encourage healthy dietary-related behaviours remains underutilised. Sharing the experiences from research groups who have worked with supermarket chains to evaluate strategies that promote healthy eating could improve the efficiency of building such relationships and enhance the design quality of future research studies.
A collective case study approach was used to synthesise experiences of engaging and sustaining research collaborations with national supermarket chains to test the effectiveness of health-focused in-store interventions. The collective narrative covers studies conducted in three high-income countries: Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
We have distilled our experiences and lessons learned into six recommendations for conducting high quality public health research with commercial supermarket chains. These include: (i) using personal contacts, knowledge of supermarket activities and engaging executive management to establish a partnership and allowing time to build trust; (ii) using scientifically robust study designs with appropriate sample size calculations; (iii) formalising data exchange arrangements and allocating adequate resource for data extraction and re-categorisation; (iv) assessing effects at individual/households level where possible; (v) designing a mixed-methods process evaluation to measure intervention fidelity, dose and unintended consequences; and (vi) ensuring scientific independence through formal contract agreements.
Our collective experiences of working in non-financial partnerships with national supermarket chains could be useful for other research groups looking to develop and implement supermarket studies in an efficient manner. Further evidence from real-life supermarket interventions is necessary to identify sustainable strategies that can improve population diet and maintain necessary commercial outcomes.
超市是许多人的主要食物来源，但它们作为鼓励健康饮食相关行为的场所的潜力尚未得到充分利用。分享与连锁超市合作评估促进健康饮食策略的研究小组的经验，可以提高建立这种关系的效率，并提高未来研究工作的设计质量。
采用集体案例研究方法，综合了与全国连锁超市合作开展以健康为重点的店内干预措施有效性研究的经验。集体叙述涵盖了在澳大利亚、荷兰和英国这三个高收入国家进行的研究。
我们将经验和教训提炼成与商业超市开展高质量公共卫生研究的六项建议。这些建议包括：（i）利用个人联系、超市活动的知识和参与的高级管理人员来建立合作伙伴关系，并留出时间建立信任；（ii）使用具有适当样本量计算的科学稳健的研究设计；（iii）正式规定数据交换安排，并为数据提取和重新分类分配足够的资源；（iv）在可能的情况下评估个人/家庭层面的效果；（v）设计混合方法的过程评估，以衡量干预的一致性、剂量和意外后果；（vi）通过正式合同协议确保科学独立性。
我们与全国连锁超市合作开展非金融伙伴关系的集体经验，对于其他希望以有效方式开展和实施超市研究的研究小组可能有用。需要从实际的超市干预中获得更多证据，以确定可以改善人群饮食并维持必要商业成果的可持续策略。
