9/24/14

Your homework for the long weekend is produce a draft of your introduction - bringing either a paper copy or a sharing/emailing an electronic copy. Your introduction should be roughly two pages in length and consist of background information/research about your topic, your question(s), your thesis and hypothesis. Additionally, all of your surveys should be distributed, collected, and ready to analyze by Thursday, October 2.

Below are the sample thesis and hypothesis from class today.

Thesis: Teenagers and adults have different priorities that work to affect their food choices. Since adults face greater and more immediate health threats as they age, they are more concerned about health and these health concerns will have a larger impact on food choices than when compared to young adults. For example, Steptoe and Pollard (1995) found that middle-aged study participants were concerned with cardiovascular disease when making choices about low-fat foods, while young adults discussed interest in weight loss/control.

Hypothesis: It was hypothesized that younger students would report health concerns as being of less importance when making food choices (compared to cost, taste, etc.) than older participants would. When asked to rank factors that impacted food choice, participants that were 30 years old or older would tend to rank health concerns significantly higher than young adults aged 15 to 19 would.

Citation: Steptoe, A., Pollard, T., & Wardle, J. (1995). Development of a measure of the motives underlying the selection of food: The food choice questionnaire. Appetite, 25, 267-284.