Stat 152 - University of California, Berkeley



Stat 152 Chen Chang

Professor Huang Nancy Yao

Dina Oba

Andrew Park

Group I Questionnaire Group Report

Introduction:

Our objective was to come up with questions with regards to our Team I project proposal. The purpose of our survey is to test for the existence of a correlation between the amount of money spent by UC Berkeley engineering upperclassmen on food and weight gained in the past year. The two dependent variables are clearly amount of money spent on food and the weight of upperclassmen engineering students. Thus our motivation is clear and our goal is to derive the simplest and quickest survey to perform and yet be comprehensive enough to gather enough data for analysis as desired.

The Questionnaire Design Process:

The following questions were omitted from the final survey design with reasoning provided:

36. How important is food to you? __________________________________________

People from our own stat152 class didn’t provide any useful responses during the testing demo we conducted.

All general information questions were shifted towards the end of the survey because students felt it was too personal to be right at the beginning, better to let the test participant get accustomed to the background of the survey contents before striking for the personal details

Questions with options to select a number on a scale from 1-10 had a zero added to be from 0-10 to be even more inclusive in the event that the test participant feels he or she is somehow not included amongst the possible choices

For instance,

11. How many meals (not including snacks) do you eat per day?

12. How often do you snack per day?

There was a suggestion to add an additional question of “Which grocery stores do you go to more?” but we chose not to add it because we were trying to shorten the questionnaire and the follow-up question didn’t directly pertain to our topic.

Parts of the following question were omitted to shorten the length of the survey:

19. What sorts of foods do you buy the most? (choose one from each row)

23. Do you have a meal plan?

This question resulted in the response “no” more often than not so we got rid of the follow-up question although it would be useful to know if these students had a meal plan.

Removed 24. If you answered yes to the above question, how many points do you have per semester?

We got the suggestion to add in the question, “Do your parents cook food for you and then bring it over?” but we decided to omit it because it was hard to define and we figured that it applied to a small portion of people.

26. Do you eat while you are studying?

27. Do your eating habits change during midterm/final weeks?

We decided to omit both of these questions because the relevancy factor wasn’t as high as certain other questions and in the interest of shortening the length of the survey some questions had to go.

8. Do you have a job/paying internship or do you get a consistent allowance?

Revised to the following to make it clearer:

22. Do you have a job/paying internship or do you get a consistent allowance? You may circle more than one.

We added in the question of gender as part of the general information section because it may be desirable to view the weight and food money spent correlation across sexes as women and men certainly have different diets and appetites.

30. How many hours per week do you spend at the gym/playing sports/exercising?

Omitted because we combined this question into a better worded question 31.

17. How much do you spend per trip to the grocery store?

This question was made clearer by changing the wording to “How much do you spend per trip to the grocery store on yourself?”

20. Do you buy bulk (as in do you shop at Costco, Sam’s Club, etc)?

This question was omitted because question 21 was reworded to incorporate the response to question 20 and it is no longer necessary.

25. How many meals a week do you eat with friends?

This question is not directly related to the survey topic so it was discarded.

6. What is your ethnicity?

This question from the background information session was tossed out because of irrelevancy to the topic and some people may not feel like disclosing the classification.

Second Revision Below:

13. On average, how many caffeinated beverages (soda, coffee, energy drinks, etc) do you consume per week?

4. Approximately how many of your meals per week are spent eating fast food like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, etc?

8. How often do you buy organic food items?

On a scale of relevancy, these three questions were eliminated for the sake of length of the survey as it was four pages long and professor Huang commented that it was too lengthy for students to take and should be less than 3 minutes long. These three were chosen to be removed because they have sibling questions which are closely related and the significance is not great as long as one or the other are retained.

Categories were deleted to make the survey look shorter and because it became irrelevant since there were only one or two questions under each classified category.

The Final Questionnaire:

After all the changes and modifications noted above, we were finally satisfied with our final questionnaire spanning 3 pages and taking about 2 minutes to complete. The reasons behind these questions are underlined.

FOOD & SPENDING SURVEY

1. How many meals (not including snacks) do you eat per day?

0 1 2 3 More than 3

We decided that this question is relevant because the number of meals per day definitely can affect the amount the person weighs and the amount of money the person spends on food (ideally the greater number of meals the more money spent and the more the person weighs).

2. How often do you snack per day?

0 1 2 3 More than 3

This question is a definite follow up from the previous question as some people may prefer snacking rather than eating three full meals per day due to time constraints or personal dieting reasons.

3. Approximately, how many meals per week do you eat out?

Breakfast 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Brunch 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Lunch 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Dinner 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Eating out generally costs more than cooking or eating at home due to the simple nature that you are paying for labor and service when a chef cooks the food for you to eat. Thus, it’s important to find out the number of times the survey subject eats out per week as a factor of how much the user spends.

4. How much money are you usually willing to spend on a meal?

$0 $1-$5 $6-$10 $11-$15 $16-$20 More than $20

This question not only gives an approximate budget of the student, it’s also useful to see how much the student values and prioritizes food (i.e. if he/she absolutely loves food then they would probably be at the higher end of the scale).

5. How many trips to the grocery store (like Safeway, Andronico’s, Albertson’s, Berkeley Bowl, etc) do you make per month?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 or More

Grocery store is a mixed bag depending on whether the subject buys mainly healthy food (fruits and vegetables) or junk food (potato chips, canned goods) as these two categories vary greatly in the amount of saturated fat content which directly leads to a rapid increase in weight gain.

6. How much do you spend per trip to the grocery store on yourself?

$0-$20 $21-$40 $41-$60 $61-$80 $81-$100 $101-$120 $120 or More

This question is a follow-up from the previous question and thus the same reason can be provided here.

7. Do you have a meal plan?

Yes No

The basis of this question is to see whether the student either lives on campus or has bought an off campus meal plan. Generally, Cal dining hall meals are balanced in diet and can be considered healthy for students (aside from Freshman 15).

8. What hours per week of each type of exercise do you do?

_____ Anaerobic (Weightlifting, yoga, Pilates, resistance training, etc.)

_____ Aerobic (Running, basketball, soccer, tennis, football, etc.)

Exercise is a proven method of staying fit and losing weight. The amount of exercise the subject does should inversely correlate to the weight gain (i.e. more exercise, less weight and vice versa).

9. How many pounds do you weigh?

less than 100

101-110 111-120 121-130 131-140 141-150 151-160 161-170 171-180 181-190 191-200 201-210 211-220 221-230 231-240 241-250 251+

This question gives a standard figure necessary for this project since we are comparing weight with amount spent on food.

10. Approximately, how tall are you?

5’ or under 5’1” 5’2” 5’3” 5’4” 5’5” 5’6” 5’7” 5’8” 5’9” 5’10” 5’11” 6’ 6’1” 6’2” or More

Height is an interesting figure to note because it may or may not be directly correlated with weight (i.e. shorter people are not always skinnier and taller people do not always weight more).

11. I am comfortable with my weight. To what degree do you agree with the statement?

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a very personal question so we decided to use a scale to determine magnitude rather than ask for a direct fill-in-blank type of answer. This way we feel that the user should feel at greater ease to respond.

12. In the past year, have you:

Gained Weight Lost Weight Maintained a Steady Weight

This question is useful to determine the long-term behavior in terms of eating habits and lifestyle of the survey subject. Trends from the past year could change in the future but would likely remain the same if the user doesn’t act to make a difference.

13. I gained my freshman fifteen. (In other words, did you gain 15 or more pounds upon

entering college? If you are a transfer student, apply this statement to your first year living away from home.) To what degree do you agree with the statement?

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This question attempts to gauge whether the subject was affected by freshman fifteen through eating at the on-campus dining commons either during freshman year or the first year away from home for junior transfers. If the user is not affected, it may be that he/she has resistance towards gaining weight and its not easy to put on the pounds, and vice versa.

The remaining questions (14-22) serve to obtain background information from the survey subject for our data analysis group to view results across different categories and groups.

14. What year are you?

First Second Third Fourth Fifth Graduate

15. What is your major? ____________________________________

16. What class are you filling this out in? ____________________________________

17. How many units/courses are you taking?

____ units

____ courses/seminars

18. How old are you? ________

19. What is your gender?

Male Female

20. Where do you live? (Circle One)

Dorms Apartments Co-op House/Cottage Sorority/Fraternity/Greek Houses Home (with your family)

21. What do you consider to be your family’s socioeconomic background?

Lower Class Middle Class Upper Middle

Class

Upper Class

22. Do you have a job/paying internship or do you get a consistent allowance? You may circle more than one.

Job Allowance None

Conclusion:

Our objective was to come up with questions with regards to our Team I project proposal. The purpose of our survey was to test for the existence of a correlation between the amount of money spent by UC Berkeley engineering upperclassmen on food and weight gained in the past year. The two dependent variables, amount of money spent on food and the weight of upperclassmen engineering students, can be analyzed through the data tallied from these survey questions. Thus our questionnaire is clear and it should be the simplest and quickest survey for the user to perform and yet be comprehensive enough for data analysis to provide an accurate conclusion.

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