Table 2.

Baseline characteristics of long day childcare services and service cooks from Hunter New England region, New South Wales, Australia, participating in the randomised controlled trial of a multi-strategy implementation intervention aimed to improve childcare compliance with nutrition guidelines

	Intervention services (n 25)		Control services (n 20)
	n	%	n	%
Operational characteristics
Total no. of children enrolled	129	33·6	114	66·9
No. of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled	5	6·5	8	17·5
Daily budget allocated for food provision per child ($AU)*, mean and sd	2·05	0·45	2·21	0·90
Services in high socio-economic area	14	56	8	40
Services located (SEIFA)
Major city+inner regional	23	92	17	85
Outer regional/remote Australia	2	8	2	10
Service cook demographic variable
University or TAFE qualification	13	52	18	90
<40 years of age	7†	29	5‡	26
>5 years as a cook in childcare services	9†	38	7‡	35
Works ≤20 h/week	2	8	5	25
Nutrition environment
Service has a nutrition policy	25	100	19‡	100
Menu is displayed in service for families to view	25	100	19‡	100
Menu-planning practices
Service plans a menu every month or more frequently	10	40	6†	32

SEIFA, Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas.

^*Eleven intervention services and eleven control services completed the survey item.

^†Twenty-four intervention services completed the survey item.

^‡Nineteen control services completed the survey item.