A Research Study On Social Research Methods - 1605 Words

METHODS Participants were selected through convenience as well as snowball sampling. The subjects were either students in Dr. Shieva Davarian’s SOCL 109-02 Social Research Methods class or acquaintances of the researchers .The participants that were targeted were between the ages of 17 and 22 and were currently enrolled in a university or secondary education program in the United States of America. In total 25 people responded to the survey in which there were 17 female respondents, 7 male respondents, and 1 respondent who did not indicate their gender. However for six of the survey questions some of the participants were excluded due to response error. The study specifically gathered data from Loyola Marymount University, which is a†¦show more content†¦After completing the survey the Likert scale questions were reverse coded, to make one the least likely and five the most likely. At that point the results for each category were added together to create an average sc ore. The open-ended questions were used to determine a general trend for why people choose the diets they consume. RESULTS Quantitative Looking at Figure 1 we see that respondents tended to buy and consume conventional foods (score of 104 out of 120) and organic products (score of 101 out of 120) the most, while home grown, gluten free, and vegetarian/vegan products were bought and consumed significantly less. Similarly in Figure 2, which rates the importance of food choices, respondents drastically preferred organic products (score of 106 out of 120) to all other types of foods. Ninety-two percent of participants believed that sustainable food costs more than conventional products, and 64% of participants believed that consuming sustainably should be a mandated practice. However participants had varied responses on who had the greatest influence on sustainable consumption (see Figure 3). At the top, participants rated communities (score of 79 out of 112), legislation/ governments (score of 72 out of 112), and individuals/ households (score of 70 out of 112), while food producers and the general public s cored slightly lower. When it came to incorporating sustainability into