Compare methods

	In-Store Food Availability Audit	Seasonal Food Availability Calendar
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2007	1994
Originator	Food-environment field-audit tradition (general observational protocol; cf. Glanz, Saelens & colleagues' instruments)	Robert Chambers (Participatory Rural Appraisal tradition)
Type	Structured observational field-audit pipeline	Participatory visual mapping of seasonal variation in food and livelihoods
Seminal source	Glanz, K., Sallis, J. F., Saelens, B. E., & Frank, L. D. (2007). Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S): Development and Evaluation. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32(4), 282-289.	Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953-969.
Aliases	Store Food Audit, Food Availability Audit, Retail Food Observation Protocol, In-Store Food Environment Audit	Seasonal Calendar, Participatory Seasonal Calendar, Seasonality Mapping, Food Availability Calendar
Related	4	3
Summary	An in-store food availability audit is a structured observational protocol in which a trained auditor physically visits a food outlet and records, against a predefined checklist, which foods are stocked, at what prices, and in what condition. It is the general field-audit method that underpins much food-environment research: rather than inferring access from business listings, the auditor walks the aisles and documents reality. The approach was crystallised by validated instruments such as Glanz, Saelens and colleagues' Nutrition Environment Measures Survey, but the audit logic — define an item list, sample outlets, train raters, observe systematically, and check reliability — is a reusable protocol that researchers adapt to corner stores, supermarkets, markets, pharmacies and informal vendors. The output is a direct, reproducible characterisation of what people can actually buy where they live.	The Seasonal Food Availability Calendar is a participatory field method, rooted in Robert Chambers's Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), in which community members themselves construct a visual chart of how food, livelihoods, and stresses vary across the year. Along a time axis of months or local seasons, participants map the timing and relative intensity of rainfall, planting and harvests, food stocks, market prices, labor demand, hunger, and illness, often using stones, beans, or marks to score each period. The resulting calendar makes the community's lean season visible and explains its drivers — when harvests run out, prices spike, work disappears, and hunger peaks. It is valued for surfacing local knowledge about seasonality that surveys taken at one point in time cannot capture.