Perception of the Food Marketing Environment among African Teen Girls and Adults - Essay Example

? School: Topic: PERCEPTIONS OF THE FOOD MARKETING ENVIRONMENT AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN TEEN GIRLS AND ADULTS REVIEW AND ANALYSIS Lecturer: Date of Submission: PERCEPTIONS OF THE FOOD MARKETING ENVIRONMENT AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN TEEN GIRLS AND ADULTS REVIEW AND ANALYSIS The perception of people about the food marketing environment goes a very long way to influence decisions that they make about purchases on these food products and services (Neckerman et al, 2010). It is due to this that a number of researches have been undertaken to understand the perceptions of the food marketing environment. In this critique paper, the article of Bibeau et al. (2012) which looks at the perceptions of the food marketing environment among African American teen girls and adults is reviewed and analyzed. The critique is done from a qualitative perspective, making use of a standardized framework for critiquing qualitative research articles. Basically, the framework is applied in such a way that it posses qualitative questions about the article and attempts to answer these from the researcher’s view point. The questions used in the framework are provided at the appendix section of this paper. It would be noted that as far as the positioning of the researchers epistemologically is concerned, they tried though the creation of hypotheses to find knowledge with which data was collected to identify its limits and validity. This was done in a very broad and open ended manner so as to ensure that the nature and grounds of knowledge that was being tested was based on the broader scope of the research problem that they were working with. Because qualitative studies have often been criticized as being more subjective rather than objective, the researchers attempted through their sampling method to ensure that there was much objectivity with the data collection process as possible. Generally, the researchers positioned themselves as facilitators who only ensured the free flow of the data collection process, rather than becoming active participants or influencing the actual content of data that was included in the study. To this end, the photographic technique and discussion methods used were largely executed among the respondents themselves. Theoretically, the researchers set their work on the stage of the influence of food advertisement on people. The aims or rationale for this theoretical perspective was identified as the direct relationship that food advertisement and for that matter food marketing environment has on the health of people, especially the African American female population. The theoretical perspective that was selected gave the researchers a multi-diverse area of research, which included health implications of the food marketing environment among African American teen girls and adults. Even though the researchers attempt to make the purpose and problem of the study clearly known in their introduction, they make no attempt to do this by clearly and explicitly stating this as research objectives or research questions. Meanwhile in qualitative research of this nature, the use of specific objectives and research questions have been found to be very useful setting a scope for the researcher in terms of areas to limit themselves to in the data collection process. It also makes the assessment of the achievability of the research problem easier (Kwate and Loh, 2010). For a qualitative research, the method used by the researchers, which was the photographic technique and discussion method, can be identified as highly suitable for the context of the study. This is because these two methods ensured that much focus was given to the respondents and their socio-cultural behavioral attitudes when it comes to food marketing environment. The methods were also highly interactive, making participation very proactive and ensuring that better rapport was created between respondents and researchers. There was no audit trail used in the study. Somehow, this could be said to have affected the data collection process or exercise when it comes to internal validity. This is said as the researchers had no basis to examine the usefulness of the research method in collecting the exact form of data that the research work was set out to examine. The absence of an audit trial can be said to have affected the selection of respondents, which involved a combination of adults and teens. The research work lacks a stated conclusion, which is a major weakness of the entire study. This is because for qualitative research of this nature, the use of conclusions helps readers to make assessment of the data collection and data analysis approaches used by the researchers by comparing their findings to existing literature (Kwate and Loh, 2010). This is however missing in the study. However, the researchers relied on their discussions as a form of stating their personal conclusions about thematic areas that the research work considered. The presentation of the findings or the report was done in a manner that can be considered to be well organized and well arranged to make comprehension of information from the study field easier. This is because the researchers clearly identified themes under which the epistemological knowledge that was being constructed was presented. A weakness with the research however is that there was major areas and aspects of a typical qualitative research that was left out in the presentation. Some of these included research questions, specific objectives and conclusion. The researchers gave much credence to ethical consideration by ensuring that the identities of their respondents were protected. In qualitative research of this nature where the researchers make use of behavioral variables, it is always important that the identities of the respondents are kept anonymous and confidential. On typical way in which the researchers did this was by ensuring that in the photographic technique, the faces of heads of the respondents who were involved was not showed. One of the best approaches that the researchers used to guarantee trust and validity with the data collection process was by using respondents who belonged to different variable backgrounds. That is, there were teens as well as adult African Americans. This ensured that there was diversity with the theoretical perspective that was being considered, rather than limiting the ideas to only a single opinion poll. A weakness with reliability and generalisability however has to do with the fact that the number of respondents used was too few. There were only seven adults and nine teens. Once this is done, it becomes difficult to generalize the ideas collected to the entire research area (Moreno & Rodriguez, 2007). In terms of method, what was learned from the study is that in my future conduct of qualitative research, it will be very important that I give much room to objectivity in the opinions and collection of data. As idealized in the study, this can be done by giving much room to respondents when it comes to the data collection process. As a way of avoiding some of the mistakes of the method used however, it would not be advisable to use a very small sample size when looking at a population as large as African American females. References Kwate, N. O. A., & Loh, J. M. (2010). Separate and unequal. The influence of neighborhood and school characteristics on spatial proximity between fast food and schools. Preventive medicine, 51(2), 153–156. Moreno, L. A., & Rodriguez, G. (2007). Dietary risk factors for development of childhood obesity. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 10(3), 336–341. Neckerman, K. M., Bader, M. D. M., Richards, C. A., Purciel, M., Quinn, J. W., Thomas, J. S., et al. (2010). Disparities in the food environments of New York City public schools. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 39(3), 195–202. Read More