Methods
Sample
The sampling method that I have used to obtain a sufficient pool of participants is purposeful sampling. Purposive sampling techniques are especially useful in exploratory, qualitative research. This purposive sample, which is a non-probability sample, consists of SUNY Oneonta resident students with a meal plan to the campus dining halls, and also selected staff members of the three campus dining halls: Wilsbach, Mills, and Hulbert. In total, I interviewed 13 resident students who routinely eat at the dining halls and 5 staff members that work within one of the three dining halls.
Research Design I engaged in an ethnography of the three SUNY Oneonta campus dining halls (Wilsbach, Mills, and Hulbert) to obtain observations
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The same goes for the study’s staff participants, but their interviews differed in substance, and only consisted of five questions. I designed each set of interview questions with the goal to explore the student and staff construction of a personal space within the dining halls. I have also designed these questions as based upon the theories of symbolic interactionism, anthropological genealogy, embodied space, and embodied language. The interview questions focus on perception of symbols and interactions within the communal space, and how these perceptions are then in turn the basis for the construction of a personal space. The participant responses were transcribed by hand at the time of the interview. A journal of notes was kept for my ethnographic observations, which took place over a two week period. Interviews were conducted speradicly over this same two week …show more content…
One way in which students develop this means of personal space is through the location within the dining halls that they choose to sit at. The arrangement of seating varies throughout each dining hall, with each embodying its own unique style. What Wilsbach, Mills, and Hulbert all have in common is that the kitchen and dining or eating areas are very distinct. The one exception of this rule would be “my kitchen” in Mills. “My kitchen” is a room located off of the Mills central dining area, and is a place where students can cook and prepare their own food if they so choose. I sat and did observations within “my kitchen” in order to better understand how students utilized that room. Some students would simply come into the room, prepare themselves a plate of food, and then leave to continue sitting in the central dining area. Other students would come into the room, prepare their food, and then pick out a seat at one of the tables if one was available. In some cases, a student or a group of students would bring in the standard, staff prepared food into “my kitchen” to sit and eat without preparing any food at all. This interested me, so I made sure to speak with some of the students who did this to try and see why they preferred eating in this room instead of the main dining area. I had specific interview questions for these students such as, “Do you always choose to sit
Two sampling methods include mail surveys and convenience sampling, a variation of a nonprobability sample. Mail surveys, inexpensive way to contact individuals over a large geographical area, provide anonymity to the respondent, and eliminate interview bias. Convenience sampling, a nonprobability sample, the only criteria is the convenience of the unit to the researcher, fast and uncomplicated, but the sampling error not determined.
Yet, with personal experience in having worked in a cubicle setting and being a student, I often found myself looking forward to lunch as much to eat as to socialize with coworkers and friends. In a passage of her article, Widdicombe describes visiting Caltech and witnessing dinnertime, in which most “Skurves” were laying out dishes to get ready for dinner. However, a small minority of students sat surrounded by laptops and problem sets, nursing bottles of Soylent, ignoring the dinnertime commotion. Although they are being arguably more productive in their usage of time, they are missing out on socializing with their peers, an essential part of the college experience. In addition to nutritional value, meals offer an outlet for self-expression, bonding, and socializing that would be lost if everyone were to say- be carrying around a water bottle with a days supply of
The observation occurred in the LNC lunchroom during the second lunch of the day. I observed two groups of people in the lunchroom. The first group I observed being a group of all males seated to the right of me. The second group being a group of all females seated in the middle of the cafeteria. The method of observation I used was naturalistic observation. The naturalistic observation experience during the LNC lunch period provided further meaning about or local, national, and global community.
People are eating and communing like in many other restaurants, but within this restaurant I venture to assume that there are social norms in place that are not present within other institutions. Over the course of my ethnography, I plan to talk with customers and the staff of Panera Bread about the demographics they perceive dining at this eating establishment. Each individual I come in contact with will be asked a series of questions yet to be determined; these questions, however, will provide insight on each individual perception of their surroundings. Even though I will be speaking with both customers and staff, I will pay particular attention to the responses of Panera Bread staff because they are individuals that witness the majority of the social dynamics of this restaurant. Bronisław Malinowski utilized this concept of participant observation to observe the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands, and similar to his ethnography, I would like to immerse myself in the Panera Bread culture for approximately 2 or 3 hours at a time to witness the differing interactions and social values present in this community. The information regarding the workings of this community will hopefully reveal the tangible differences between the Panera Bread location in Topsham in comparison to other Panera Bread locations. Even if the information I compile results
Some dining locations are open past 8:00 PM several nights of the week on-campus. However, many of these eating facilities are relatively unknown to a large portion of the underclassmen. Most are located under dorms and hidden from the student’s eyes. They are also incapable of holding a large amount of students simply because they don’t have the room.
College and University Food service is having its moment and was viewed as recently as twenty years ago as dowdy, bland and institutional. In a survey of C&U foodservice operators conducted last summer, Y-Pulse found that the biggest change seen in student expectations over the prior year was an increased desire for healthful and fresh items. Most students now don't grow up eating at home forever, or wait until mom is done cooking, walk in and ask “what’s for dinner”. They grow up eating Thai, Mexican, and Indian and from authentic ethnic restaurants, not Taco John's or Taco Bell. They have much higher expectations, which means we have to kick things up a bit. The new generation they are calling the Z generation is in evaluation and colleges
A double flight of stairs led down to the dining room. The dining room itself was to be divided by a row of paired plaster columns running east to west. Windows look both north and south to create a bright and airy room. There was very little storage room was tucked into the east staircase, giving the impression that food was brought over to be cooked as needed, as many of the supplies remained in the refractory. Until the construction of Prothro Commons in 1983 this room functioned as the freshman-dining hall. This is an interesting concept, because one of the things that makes sweet briar so unique and gives it such a sense of community is the idea that everybody and all classes share a dining room. The idea of having a separate dining room for the freshman class raises the question of ostracization from the rest of the classes in a place where community should
A group of mix-matched chairs is forced into a singular, tight space in the lobby. Anyone who enters and waits must wait in such close contact with those around them. Awkward silence is seemingly inevitable. People constantly remark about the little amount of sitting, making comments such as “if only we had a couch,” but they fix this problem by using the open area of the floor. While this goes against the design of the building, it works well and allows a larger group of students to interact.
In order to find out how many students make use of their current meal plan, my group went out and surveyed forty students (twenty-three freshmen, six second-years, six third-years, and five fourth-years) currently attending the University of Florida in a face-to-face question format. A majority of the students who were involved in this study were freshmen, as they are the demographic that is the most encouraged to purchase a meal plan for convenience as well as social reasons. The students were asked a set of five questions as follows:
In relation to the modern world of food, in terms of ways in which people or families have grown accustomed to this in turn affects the ways in which students and teenagers eat. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s article, “The American Table and The Global Table,” he expresses that people consume so mindlessly and ignorantly that as a nation, we are giving the government opportunities to manipulate the ways in which food is perceived. Foer argues that “today, to eat like everyone else is to add another straw to the camel’s back” (Foer 971). This is significant in that it highlights the role that consumers play in the food industry. Put bluntly, the more mindless demands that are made, the worse the situation becomes. Students and adolescents, ambitious and goal-driven, often claim that it is important to stop such unawareness, but the irony lies in the fact that we might be just as unaware. The more we demand, the more the government complies and essentially, people are “sending checks to the absolute worst abusers” (Foer 968). As administrators in the cafeteria, where finances are limited, and time is constrained on a daily basis, I believe it is so important that your team continues to implement quick, but sustainable food choices. In a sense, it is purely the matter of the ways of how easily students can be conditioned into choosing the right foods and by continuing to maintain these healthy options students will be able to avoid the growing epidemic, obesity. Michael Pollan claims that “daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds,” and what can be drawn from this is that people are affected by habits and if students are habitually surrounded by these healthier food choices, the result will be most significant and beneficial in the end (Pollan 10). While I am not saying that by implementing a
During Native American Heritage Week I participated in “Decolonize your Diet”. This event was located in the Cesar Chavez Center at the Terrace level in Richard Oakes Multicultural Center (ROMC). The event was held on September 24th and started at 2:00 PM and went an hour long. But some participants stayed longer to talk to each other and eat. The purpose of the event was both community outreach and cultural education. Admission price was free and everybody that attended the event including me was expecting a lecture. Turns out, this event was interactive. We started out by introducing ourselves and stated what we were majoring in. Going around the table everybody was shy and timid. Everyone was in their shell at first, but gradually warmed
This set-up is what thirty students so or found in front of them on the evening of Tuesday, February 9 in Rosen College of Hospitality Management’s Disney Dining Room as they entered Rosen Life’s first Etiquette Banquet.
For our observation exercise, my partner and I decided to visit the Badger Market in the Medical Sciences building from 12-1pm. From just observing on the sidelines, we were able to pick up on social norms and identify the culture of the people that visited that market. We noticed that there were a lot of students coming into the market to get lunch and either leaving or coming to sit down. For the students that did sit down, we noticed that they all decided to sit at different tables from one another. When it did get crowded and people could no longer do that, they decided to sit on either ends of the table as far away from each other as possible.
The research methods that I used for this paper were surveys, interviews and observations. I performed a survey on ten college students in which I asked various yes and no questions and ones with various multiple-choice answers. Do you have a meal ...
Hart, Jeffrey, "How to Get a College Education." Lunsford, Andrea and John Ruszkiewicz, The Presence of Others: Voices and Images That Call for Response 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin's 2000. 126-132.