Final Research Question
Color Changes at UBC taken by Rosemary Wright
We hope you all had a wonderful relaxing Thanksgiving and sunny long weekend with family and friends wherever you were! Our group has lots of work to accomplish this week, including preparing surveys to hand out to individuals (students and faculty) on UBC campus as well as finalizing our research design. Our two research questions have not changed since writing the CBEL proposal and will kept to:
- What improvements can be made to the Gage Snack Vending Model already in place on UBC campus?
- How can the scope of the model be expanded to include beverage vending machines?
Method: Qualitative or Quantitative
We have had some disagreements within our group about whether or not the survey should be qualitative or quantitative. After some serious debating, our group has decided to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in the format of our survey: including four ranked questions and two open-ended questions, respectively. The written survey, containing a total of six questions, will be administered to a pilot group of 10 random participants. If all goes well, from there it will be randomly handed out to a sample of approximately 250 participants. The quantitative questions of our survey will be statistically analyzed to determine percentages of the population the results can be inferred to. The qualitative questions of our survey are open ended, and will be analyzed to determine consumer snack and beverage preferences.
Status of CBEL Project: Expected Outcome
We had an online meeting on Tuesday to discuss the possible outcomes of our research. We were also able to schedule a tentative meeting time with Victoria, Liska, and our Teaching Assistant, Lorne James. The intentions of this meeting are to update all parties involved with our CBEL project and to confirm that we have addressed all the points we set out to. On Wednesday, October 16th, the pilot survey was done with a random sample of 10 students. After the surveys were completed, we found that a revision to the format of the survey was needed. In regards to the questions asked, we believe that they were sufficient enough to provide useful results that will help us address our research questions.
Working our Survey Questions on a Laptop
Our group expects that the current Gage Snack Vending Model will not be performing optimally due to the limited awareness of the relationship between food and health in society. As an outcome of our research, we plan to provide the survey results in a clear and concise format for our community partner, Victoria, to work from. From these results, as well as the results of our audit, we hope to be able to offer valuable suggestions to Victoria, so that she can implement improvements to make the vending model a more effective one. With data collected through our research we hope that UBCFS can improve the vending system in place, and continue setting a positive example.
Our Updated Research Action Plan
- Prepare Survey Questions; Determine Hypotheses (if required)
- Conduct Pilot Survey on 10 random participants
- Finalize Survey Questions
- Conduct Survey on 250 random participants by random sampling
- Analyze Data by Qualitative/Quantitative methods and come to Conclusions (where appropriate)
- Apply Conclusions to the sample population and reflect on Research Questions
- Make Suggestions about the Gage Snack Vending Model
View in Front of McMillan Building On Thanksgiving Weekend
Looking Forward
We will be conducting the surveys sometime next week, as we have already finalized our survey questions and have completed the pilot survey. Before handing out the surveys, we wanted to let you know that we came up with our null and alternative hypothesis for our research:
HO/HA
- Ho: UBC vending machines with the Gage Vending Snack Model is not a success.
- Ha: UBC vending machines with the Gage Vending Snack Model is a success.
In other words, our null hypothesis is “The Gage Snack Vending Model at UBC Vancouver is not a success”, and our alternate hypothesis is “The Gage Snack Vending Model at UBC Vancouver is a success”. In order to determine whether or not the GVSM is a success based on surveys, the surveys will include Yes/No questions and a rating (1-7) system:
1) Yes: Success; No: Not Success
2) 5-7: Success; 1-4: Not Success
We are planning on dividing the 250 surveys equally to each group member. Each group member in turn will locate themselves to different parts of the campus at different times of the day and hand out their survey. By the end of next week, we should have all the surveys completed so that we can determine the results and to incorporate these results to our CBEL research paper.
Enjoy the rest of the sunny weekend!
Group 26