Exploring the volume and type of unhealthy advertising in close proximity to schools: An audit of bus shelter advertising on one mid-sized Canadian city
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Unhealthy advertising influences the attitudes and behaviour of children. Child exposure to products such as alcohol and fast food have been linked to adverse health problems, such as heavy drinking and obesity. Bus shelter advertisements are a potential exposure site for unhealthy advertising for children as they take municipal transit to and from school. This study explores the volume and type of unhealthy advertising at bus shelters within close proximity to schools in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Methods: In Halifax, Nova Scotia, 55 bus shelters with advertising were within a 500-metre distance of an elementary, junior, or high school. Three audits occurred in October 2020 (Fall), January 2021 (Winter), and April 2021 (Spring). Advertisements were coded as unhealthy if containing alcohol or gambling promotions. Food promotions were classified as maximum (healthy), moderate, or minimum (unhealthy) nutrition. Results: In total, 319 bus shelter advertisements were collected across three audits. Of these, 14.4% of advertisements were unhealthy (n = 46), and less than 1% (n = 3) were classified as healthy. For the unhealthy advertising, 37.0% (n = 17) of advertisements promoted gambling, 32.6% (n = 15) advertised food, 21.7% (n = 10) advertised non alcohol beverages, and 8.7% (n = 4) advertised alcohol. The majority of advertisements (n = 270; 84.6%) were classified as other. Implications: Children are potentially exposed to unhealthy advertising as they travel to and from school in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Further research is needed to understand how and when children are exposed to these types of advertising. Municipalities can consider implementing further bylaws and administrative orders that create supportive environments for children and youth.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".