Assessing the Relationship between Retail Store Tobacco Advertising and Local Tobacco Control Policies: A Massachusetts Case Study

Table 2

Descriptive statistics of all study variables at the municipality level, n = 42.

	Mean (SD)	Minimum	Maximum
Tobacco advertisements
Presence of advertisements	8.6 (4.6)	4	36
Number of tobacco advertisements^a	6.7 (2.8)	1.6	14.5
Number of tobacco advertisement categories (range)	2.9 (0.8)	1.3	5
Retail store type
Convenience stores	7.4 (8.3)	1	24
Gas station	4.0 (1.9)	1	8
Liquor store	2.6 (1.2)	1	5
Drug store	1.2 (0.4)	1	2
Chain retail stores	1.9 (0.7)	1	3
Nonchain retail stores	1.3 (0.4)	1	2
Other store types^b	1.9 (1.0)	1	4
Categories of tobacco advertisements
Presence of external ads	5.0 (3.1)	1	18
Presence of backlit ads	0 (0.0)	0	0
Presence of branded items	1.3 (0.9)	1	4
Smokeless tobacco ads	4.4 (2.1)	1	10
Presence of flavored tobacco ads	2.6 (1.4)	1	5
Presence of a power wall	8.0 (4.1)	4	32
Presence of discounts on tobacco products	3.8 (4.2)	1	20
Presence of e-cigarette ads	5.6 (2.0)	1	12
Presence of internal posters	4.0 (3.5)	1	19

Note. The values in this table represent the average figures for retail stores across all the sampled municipalities. ^aSum of the number of tobacco advertisements across all stores = 2,804. ^bOther store types include tobacco shops, big-box stores, fashion stores, bars, and private clubs.