I feel that the sample that I used were at a right age of 16 to 19 year olds. I feel this was the best age sample to use because the sample we questioned were more or less my age so I could analyse them and relate to the results more better rather than questioning an elderly user or a middle aged user because I wouldn’t always understand their concepts of their eating patterns.If we were too choose a specific population for example only questioning students from a particular race or culture would have given us a whole different result. Every culture & ethnicity have different ways of cooking and eating their foods, if were to take an African Caribbean student we’d receive a higher percentage in fast food consumption because African Caribbean’s usually have more bigger and oiler food sizes.Whereas if I were to question perhaps an English or Irish student I think I’d receive a less percentage of fast food consumption because they are used to having more vegetables or less fatty foods.
Although I cannot generalise and say that every culture eats the same foods, it also is true and does apply to some users. Furthermore I feel that if I were to have a sample where I would use only a specific race then it would affect & change the results greatly.In class we were given a choice by our teacher of what research method we would like to use for the coursework. Some students were confused of whether to use questionnaires or interviews so our teacher played a helpful part because he took time to explain to the class as a whole the advantages & disadvantages of both questionnaires & interviews. After he taught us this we fully understand the difference between the research methods and had a better insight on what we found easier to use in order to pass the coursework.I feel that by using questionnaires it was a better choice as for me personally and I’m sure others would also agree with me that it is so much easier to gather and plot information into charts & graphs.
However I also feel that it was a good idea that students mixed and some chose to use different research methods because it would give us a clearer picture on how students feel when given questions during an interview or questionnaire & if the results will differ greatly.By using different research methods it gives us a wider variety of information from the students to later use in charts and to evaluate into research. Personally I think that the research method does not to be altered at all; the research was fine in all aspects. All the participants that participated in the survey were all attentive when I was debriefing them about the true aims of the survey. None of the students complained or made any disruptions while completing the questionnaire; this made the survey worthwhile.I feel that by choosing questionnaires as a research method I was able to collect vast amounts of samples. When I gathered the information given by the students I felt that it was very easy applying the results onto a graph or table in order to come up with a final conclusion of the overall purpose of the survey. I felt that everything was much clearer to calculate and explain rather than interviews because that would’ve been more complex to calculate.
Furthermore the research method of questionnaires was the right choice to make and could not have been improved.