School Lunches: A Qualitative Study

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My mock research project involved conducting a study examining students’ attitudes toward school lunches. It is a quantitative descriptive study intended to examine attitudes of a group of middle school children regarding lunchtime at their school. The premise of the study is to find out what the children like and dislike about their lunchtime, thus providing the school insight on how to make the experience more appealing and supportive for them.
Theoretical framework for the study draws from a newer, integrated model developed to address why children are not employing a healthier lifestyle (Jefferies, Noar, & Thayer, 2015). . The model encompasses attributes from other theories previously used by researchers to investigate overweight …show more content…

Some of health problems obese children are at risk of having include: blood pressure problems, high cholesterol, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal and joint problems, liver disease, and gastroesophageal reflux. In addition to physical problems, overweight children are also at risk of developing psychological, emotional, and social impairments (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U. S. Department of Agriculture, 2015-2020).
A holistic approach to understanding the complexities surrounding the weight and health issues of young people in America is needed to intervene and produce successful outcomes. The comprehensive child consumption pattern model is a system-based model developed specifically to address childhood overweight and obesity from a holistic perspective (Jefferies, Noar, & Thayer, 2015). This quantitative study is designed to address the problem of a lack of successful interventions to impact weight and health problems in Arkansas …show more content…

Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients will be calculated to ensure the internal consistency for the survey. An analysis of variance will be used to identify any differences among the survey factor means of student grade, gender, and school. All data will be calculated using SPSS for Windows.
The Northcentral University Institutional Review Board and the Garland County school district approved this study.
Limitations
Limitations include restricted generalizability due to the limited scope of the project. The study comprised only students from two educational facilities in Garland county, Arkansas. The use of a newer theoretical model, as well as, newer assessment tools may also be a limiting factor of the study.
Advantages of cross sectional studies include being inexpensive to conduct, usefulness in generating hypothesis, and usefulness for gathering large amount of data for planning purposes. Dis-advantages of cross sectional studies include inability to show causal relationships and being an “at this time” review of a situation ( ).
Advantages associated with quantitative descriptive design prompted choosing the design. One advantages of the quantitative descriptive design is accommodation of large amounts of data. For this study, feedback from the students is needed in order to guide decision making and

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