Assignment 4

For Assignment 4 we were asked to conduct some further investigations as we continued our look into primary research. Along with Connor and Sam, we decided to focus our interviews on the topic of food preferences, continuing research that I started on a previous project set by SCRI. We looked at whether the appearance of your food matters as much as the taste. This came from when I looked into the possibility of producing non allergic white strawberries rather than the traditional red kind. In my opinion white strawberries wouldn't have appealed to the public as they don't hold the same connotations as red ones. We conducted 6 interviews on a variety of 1st year students.

I found the initial idea of carrying out interviews quite daunting and was perhaps a bit apprehensive at first to undertake the experiment as this was unlike anything we had been asked to do before. The decision to conduct the interviews as a group came after a pilot test when on discussion we found it to be easier to get a response from subjects if they felt like they were in a more relaxed conversational environment than a one on one question answer situation. We took turns with one taking notes while the other two talked to the subject, this way both us and them felt more comfortable.

The questions asked were:

- Describe your favorite meal?

- What makes this special?

- How does the environment effect the experience?

- What would you do if your received a bad looking meal?

- Would you taste it first?

- If a meal looked nice but still tasted bad what would be your actions?

We got a variation of answers but mainly the thing that we found was that people generally preferred comfort more than anything. By this they ment meals at home cooked by family members as they felt that they could more easily say if they wanted moe food or if they didn't like something. They also mentioned that having say their gran make them food, it took them back to a happy stage in their life. Of those who said that they would like to eat out there were a mixture of feelings regarding sending food back as some said that they would definitely do it as they were paying for it while others said that they never would as they would be too embarrassed. The general feeling was that they would always try their food no matter what it looked like and if something looked good and tasted bad, it was mainly their fault.

Afterwards we has a discussion with other class members about our findings. I found this to be very purposeful as it helped me to fully analyse what we had found out. I also quite enjoyed hearing other peoples opinions and giving my views on their findings. I definitely feel that this was a worthwhile task however I think that next time I should maybe put a bit more planning into the type of questions asked as although the results I received were good, they could have been a lot better. Perhaps a series of pilot tests followed by group discussions would yield the best results.