Mothers' Health Conscious - Essay Example

Understanding Distributions Understanding Distributions A recent article published by Natural News (Meridith, reported on a poll entitled Cart to Kitchen 2013: Slicing Into Moms Food Decisions, a cooperative work by TheMotherhood.com and Fleishman-Hillard. According to the article, more and more mothers are referring to blogs (instead of expert opinion from medical websites and health practitioners) in making food decisions for their families. 1,000 American mothers were included in the survey (Meridith, 2013).

Many respondents felt that major brands were not able to address their individual needs, which meant that changes in the food and beverage marketing have to be implemented so as to appeal to moms. Survey shows that more moms are now reading nutritional labels, which is an indication that more of them are becoming more particular of the kind of food they serve their families. More mothers are also avoiding high fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes, sugar and other additives which are blamed for the rise in obesity among children.

Meanwhile, 96% of mothers reported that they wish to change their food buying habits this 2013. This article by Ben Meridith (2013) was published in a website which advocates healthy living. By using distributions from a survey, it was able to support its claim that more people are awakening to the need for a healthy lifestyle. At the end of the article Meridith said, “while food corporations are not known for their healthy messages, we can hope that they will approach marketing with a refreshing honesty” (2013) which in a sense meant that there is business in providing healthy food.

Hence, in total, the article was able to support the website’s advocacy – that a healthy lifestyle is the new trend. While the writer for this article was successful in supporting his claims, one cannot say whether his interpretation of the distribution was correct or not. This is because he stated only the percentage distribution and not the actual frequency distribution of the survey. Moreover, there is no way for this researcher to check on the actual questions posted to the respondents and determine whether or not questions statements might have affected responses (Driscoll & Brizee, 2010).

Aside from this, only the averages were reported and there was no way of computing other characteristics of the distribution – we cannot know the variances of the responses to the survey, and we have no way of checking whether groups were homogenous or not. In short, while the figures used in this survey were effective at supporting the claims of the article, one cannot know the accuracy of the interpretations made. It is possible that while the mean stated that mothers are becoming more health conscious, once the variance or standard deviation of the distribution is computed, it can reveal that responses were so far away from each other where some mothers are making healthy food choices, others have no idea what it is (Quick MBA, 2010).

Hence, unless the actual frequency distribution is reported and other characteristics of the distribution are computed, then we cannot say that the writer’s conclusions are statistically relevant. References Driscoll, D. L., & Brizee, A. (2010). Writing Survey Questions: Tips for effective and relevant questions. Purdue Online Writing Lab. Retrieved March 2, 2013, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/559/06/ Meridith, B. (2013). Survey finds moms put trust in blogs for food facts.

Natural News. Retrieved March 2, 2013, from http://www.naturalnews.com/038838_food_facts_moms_online_research.html Quick MBA. (2010). Standard deviation and variance. Internet Center for Business and Management. Retrieved from http://www.quickmba.com/stats/standard-deviation/