Reasoning Skills

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Assignment 5: Studies

Due: Friday Nov. 16th at 5 p.m.

Assignment 6 is based on Lesson 9 which builds on some of the material in Lessons 7 & 8.  Before you attempt this assignment, be sure you have worked carefully through Lessons 7, 8, and 9. There is only one section to this assignment.  Maximum length: 800 words.

Reminder: there is to be absolutely no collaboration of any sort on this or any assignment.  

                   All work submitted should be entirely your own.

Directions:  Read the report, “Sorry Dieticians…labels, labels, labels, won’t influence offerings at the dinner table”. Use the 4 Strategies found in Lesson 9 (p.6) to prepare a succinct critique of the study as it has been reported here. No further research is required or recommended. Be sure to indicate the main conclusion drawn and identify any problems with the study itself, as well as any problems with the reporting of the study.

Your assessment should be presented as a well-organized, concise essay which addresses the question of whether, based on the study as reported, the proficient reasoner should accept the main conclusion.  Begin your assessment by clearly stating and identifying the main inference drawn in the report on the basis of the study, and briefly outline the evidence.  

As a guide for your rough notes (not your final draft) and for thinking systematically about the study, refer to the Three Phases of a Study (see Lesson Notes pp. 3-4).  But you should not discuss all of these.  Focus only on the main problems with the study.

**** See page 3 for some helpful hints.

   The summary of the study is on the following page.

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      Report of Study for Assignment 5 Critique

Sorry Dieticians… labels, labels, labels won’t influence offerings at the dinner table  

Who chooses high-vegetable food options over hamburgers? Not college students… if a recent study is any guide. Even when shown that it's unhealthy, students make poor food choices.

A study commissioned by the Restaurant Association of America and the National Grocery Manufacturers Association shows: labels don’t influence food choices.  While regulations governing mandatory food labels in North America have become increasingly stringent requiring much more detailed nutritional information for consumers on all packaged foods and meals served at restaurants than ever before, excessive labelling doesn’t make any difference in consumer choices.    

The study recently published in the American Journal of Marketing showed when menu labels on college cafeteria food highlighted the nutritional good and the bad of various meal options for students it made absolutely no difference in their selections. Study authors, Chris Hoef and William Verb found that, "Although it is important to inform consumers about the nutritional characteristics of the food offered, providing nutrition information in less healthy food environments such as fast-food restaurants is unlikely to alter consumers' food choices."

The research team, based at Ghent University in Belgium, asked 224 students who regularly ate at two of the university's cafeterias to log their diets for several days. Then the researchers displayed posters in the cafeterias that rated meals on how healthy they were -- zero stars for the least healthy to three stars for the most healthy. Study participants didn't know the posters were part of a study. Labels displayed next to the menu items highlighted whether a meal was high in salt, calories, saturated fats or vegetables.  Six months later, the participants, who were mostly male undergraduates, again logged what they ate for a few days. Though the researchers originally predicted diners would have responded to the posters by making healthier food choices, they found no difference in the number of meals eaten from each star category before or after the posters were up.  

Seventy percent of the meals offered in the cafeterias earned zero or one stars being weak in nutritional value, both before and after the labels. Only thirty percent of the menu offerings at the cafeterias boasted 2 or more stars (healthier meals). Students' meal choices mirrored the proportion of offerings in each star category.

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Some Helpful Hints:

Four Overlapping Strategies for Assessing a Reported Study

(p. 6 Lesson 9)

Here are four overlapping strategies for assessing a reported study:

1. Examine the three phases of the study: sample selection, measuring instrument, and

    conclusions.

2. Ask yourself what would provide good evidence for the conclusion of the study, and

    see if the study provides this evidence.

3. Use the media checklist to prompt additional questions you should pose about the

    study and its reporting.

4. If the data doesn’t support the conclusion drawn, decide what conclusion the data

    does support.

Lesson 9 Three Phases of a Study (see p. 3); see also text p. 204

1. Subject selection

   Is the sample size adequate?

   Is the sample representative?

2. Testing/measurement

   Is the measuring instrument/testing method reliable and valid?

3. Drawing conclusions

   What inferences were drawn by the researchers or by the reporter?

   Do these inferences seem warranted?

Other relevant checklists:

Checklist for evaluating reports of studies see text p. 213

Media Checklist see text p. 65

Suggested Answer Assignment 5 Studies F12

          The report, “Labels don’t influence food choices” is about a small study recently published in the American Journal of Marketing conducted by researchers at Ghent University in Belgium. The study was commissioned by the Restaurant Association of America and the National Grocery Manufacturers Association. Study authors, Chris Hoef and William Verb reviewed and compared the meal choices made by 224 undergraduate students at two campus cafeterias before and six months after nutritional labels were posted next to menu selections. After doing so, researchers concluded that, “providing nutritional information in less healthy food environments such as fast-food restaurants is unlikely to alter consumers’ food choices.”  However, the main inference which has been drawn on the basis of the study is, “excessive labelling doesn’t make any difference in consumer choices”. In other words, excessive labelling doesn’t cause consumers to make different choices. Neither of these inferences is warranted on the basis of this study due to serious issues with both the sample and the method used, and due to the fact that the groups which commissioned the study have a financial interest in public acceptance of its results.