CBEL Community Visit
As we are UBC students, we visit our CBEL community almost everyday. Most of our group members have become more aware of vending machines across campus and have spotted some hidden in building corridors and libraries. We have taken pictures of some “classical” vending machines and some Gage Snack Vending Models and have examined the contents and the frequency of consumers purchasing a snack or a drink: There was a clear preference for snacks than beverages. We believe this is due to the greater variety of snacks that attract individuals visually or because people, in general, are more prone to purchase snacks instead of beverages (which they can get either from a water fountain or for free from Starbucks).
LFS 350 Class, Situated in the MacMillan Building
Feedback from our Community Partners Victoria and Liska
We are having some trouble setting up a meeting with our community partner, Victoria; at times we are busy while our community partner is available to meet and vice versa. We were planning on bringing our TA to the meeting, however, our TA is away on vacation and we do not know when he will be back. We hope to have a meeting soon because we would like to present our survey to Victoria and get feedback. As of now, we will be emailing Victoria with our research question and our final survey questions to make sure we are on the right track. Our group no longer wants to prolong the distribution of surveys; the faster we distribute them, the faster we get results. Our first survey will be distributed by two group members: Rosemary and Tyra at the bottom floor of the UBC SUB this friday morning.
Beverage Options at the School of Kinesiology
Description and Reflection of Community Visit and Pilot Survey Impressions
Last Friday, we conducted our pilot survey at the UBC SUB: This pilot survey was conducted to make sure our survey questions were appropriate for our research. Each survey on average took two minutes, therefore it took us roughly twenty minutes to complete ten surveys. We encountered some problems with our pilot survey: first, students did not want to fill out the survey because they don’t use vending machines. It was much harder than planned to find students who use vending machines on campus. Another observation we made was that two friends who filled out the survey had similar answers for the qualitative questions. Clearly this indicates that both students discussed their answers with each other and some persuasion occurred that changed a friend’s thought. We need to make sure that all surveys are independent of each other. Another problem we encountered was that our survey formatting caused students to circle “Always” instead of a number for each question. We need to find a way to clearly state that a number should be circled, otherwise we cannot use qualitative research. Lastly, we had issues with our last survey question: “What categories of non-perishable snacks or beverages would you like to see added to vending machines campus-wide?” Some participants did not clearly understand the term “non-perishable” or did not read the question carefully so answers like smoothies were written. We will need to change the formatting of the question to make it clear that vending machines can only carry non-perishable foods. One last thing to note is that we used a paper per survey. To save paper and money, we will be adding two survey per paper.
Foggy Morning on UBC Campus
Research and Project Process and Progress
We are slowly progressing with our research. Each one of us has been busy studying for midterms and writing non-LFS research papers these past two weeks. Now that the hardest weeks of the term are almost behind us, we will have time to focus strictly on the CBEL project and find ways to improve the Gage Snack Vending Model. Our itinerary for this week is to meet up with Victoria, and hopefully our TA Lorne. If not, an email will be sent to her at the latest tomorrow evening. Once our surveys are approved by Victoria, they will be distributed next week. Each member of the group will be responsible to hand out at least 40 surveys on different parts of the campus. Some of us will focus on the SUB while others will focus on different libraries across campus. We hope everything goes well with the survey distribution, and we will let you all know the outcomes next week.
The sun here in Vancouver has vanished and the thick fog has taken over the UBC campus. We hope the fog doesn’t change your decision to walk around outside and watch the last of the colorful leaves drop to the ground. Winter is just around the corner!
Happy Wednesday!
Group 26