Vegetable Research Project

Data Collection

During this project we will be collecting about 270,000 child-day observations of data. Our research assistants stand near the area where the students dump their lunch trays and record for each child the number of items of fruits and/or vegetables that they both took and ate. We record this data in an iPhone app that we developed that can be downloaded for free at the apple app store and is called “v-project”. Here is a short video that provides more information about how to use the app.

Any school is welcome to use our data collection tools to conduct their own evaluation of any approach that they chose to implement. In many cases, this might provide a great real-life science experiment for students. Feel free to contact us with any questions about using the v-project app. We would also be willing to provide any assistance that you need in evaluating the data you collect.

We also have a paper based version that we used as part of our pilot study. All of the information is recorded on the following sheet:

Data collection sheet

The notation on the sheet has the servings consumed and then the servings still on the tray. For example, 1/1 means that the child ate one serving and still had one serving on the tray, or 0/1 means they didn't eat any servings and there was still one serving on the tray. 0, 1, and 2 are all short for 0/0, 1/0, and 2/0. We transfer all of this information into the following excel sheet:

Data collection excel sheet

We can import the data from this excel sheet into our statistical program (Stata) and conduct all of the analysis on the data. If you would like to collect similar data at your school, please email us at veggies@byu.edu and we can provide additional instructions on how to collect this type of data. We can also provide help in analyzing your data so that you can evaluate any experiments or changes that your school is trying.